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No. 11 Ole Miss scuffles, losing to Little Rock in annual Kids' Day game

11by:Jake Thompson•04/15/25•

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Ole Miss pitcher Landon Waters. Mandatory credit: Ole Miss athletics

Whether there was still some hangover effect from Sunday’s loss to Tennessee or something else the Ole Miss baseball team put on a poor performance in front of the kids on Tuesday.

The No. 11 Rebels dropped its annual Kids’ Day game to Little Rock by a score of 7-3 for its third loss in their last four games. Only the second midweek loss on the season but this one stings a little more.

Ole Miss (27-10) looked like a team going through the motions but that might even be generous. In front of over 8,000 fans that were mostly school-aged children who come to Oxford-University for the yearly 11 a.m. game the Rebels looked disinterested at times.

If the thought was only needing a 50 percent effort against Little Rock (16-19) would be more than enough to get the job wrong then that was the incorrect thought.

“I thought it was a terrible effort,” Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco said. “I thought we didn’t show up in any phase. You can point the finger wherever you want, but offensively we were really bad. We left (12) on, seemed like more than that.”

At the plate the Rebels went 4-for-23 (.174) with runners on base and 0-12 with runners in scoring position. They finished seven hits but managed only three runs. Two out production has been better for them but on Tuesday they went 1-for-8.

Another key stat from the game was Little Rock went 2-for-4 with bases loaded while Ole Miss went 0-for-1.

On the mound Cade Townsend got the start but had mixed results in his four innings of work. He got seven strikeouts but allowed three runs off two hits, two walks and one hit batter.

Landon Waters and Brayden Jones worked three innings of shutout relief but Alex Canney and Hudson Calhoun followed it up with a combined four runs allowed off three total hits, a walk and a hit batter.

“On the mound, not good enough,” Bianco added. “We have to be better. Again, walks and HBPs at the bottom of the lineup that lead to base runners and then not being able to make pitches to get off the field.”

Ole Miss dips back into Southeastern Conference play now, heading to South Carolina for a Thursday-Saturday series.

Now the trip to Columbia serves as the need for a bounce-back game after scuffling against the Trojans in what has usually been scheduled as a winnable game in a different environment with O-U Stadium filled with kids than the usual Ole Miss fan.

“For whatever reason didn’t show up today,” Bianco said. “That’s one of the reasons you have this Kids’ Day. To kind of break up that monotony and you have 5,000 screaming kids in the stadium. We had a good (batting practice). We thought we were ready to go, bouncing around. Yeah, it’s an early start but we’ve played this early before so there’s no excuses. We just laid an egg today.”

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