Ole Miss baseball has its season on the brink after dropping fourth straight SEC series

If the Ole Miss baseball team is going to start to turn the season around the window to do so is closing quickly. The defending national champions are still searching for their first Southeastern Conference series win of the season.

The more alarming issue is the effect the piling up of losses is starting to take on the team.

Second baseman Peyton Chatagnier, who usually at least has a smile or a positive outlook, was searching for answers in his postgame interview. He could not manage to find many words to convey where things go from here.

In the moments after No. 5 Arkansas defeated Ole Miss, 6-4, on Saturday to take the series after splitting Friday’s doubleheader the leaders on the team were not sure where the solutions to their problems will come from.

“It’s tough, I don’t know. Win, I guess,” was all Chatagnier could muster when asked how does Ole Miss keep spirits up.

Ole Miss is 18-13 overall and currently sitting with a 2-10 record in SEC play. The past two weekends have seen the Rebels manage to split the first two games of the series only to drop the deciding rubber match and miss out on securing a SEC series win.

Last week was via a walk-off by Texas A&M in the bottom of the 9th inning. This week was coughing up opportunity after opportunity to send the Razorbacks (25-6, 8-4) home with a series loss.

Whatever is standing between the Rebels and stringing SEC wins together is something that is eluding them at the moment.

“Got no idea,” Chatagnier said. “We’re just not playing great baseball. I think we’re better than we’re playing. I don’t know what it is but we got to figure it out.”

Ole Miss is currently in a phase where they are unable to get out of their own way when getting back into games.

A pair of errors on the day, which is becoming more common place for the Rebels than not, led to one Arkansas run and put runners in scoring position.

The Razorbacks jumped out to leads and Ole Miss was able to respond and tie the game up or get close. The issue was the pitching was not able to sustain the positive momentum.

Twice out of the three innings where the Rebels scored a run Arkansas answered the next half-inning with at least a run.

“I think there’s a couple ways to look at it,” said Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco. “I challenged them to not fall into the ‘Woe is me. Bad luck.’ We hit some balls, even in the ninth inning, where (Arkansas made some nice plays. …That’s what the losing team says a lot of times. It’s not about luck. If you really go back and watch the tape then they made more plays than we did. We had opportunities to make a couple plays and maybe minimize some innings. We didn’t.”

There is still more than half of the SEC schedule remaining and the Rebels do have a favorable end to theirs.

Five of the final six opponents have losing records in the SEC, which I know does not say much with the record the Rebels have, but there is the potential to right the ship.

Starting next weekend at Starkville against a Mississippi State team that is also scuffling. Finding a way to take a road series against the Bulldogs could be a shot in the arm, with No. 1 LSU looming in two weeks.

After the Tigers visit then Ole Miss closes out the regular season against Georgia (1-9 SEC), at Missouri (4-8), Auburn (4-8) and at Alabama (4-7).

The mood is not good in the Ole Miss clubhouse right now. Time will tell if the leadership is able to keep the season between the ditches the final month and a half.