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Ole Miss grabs series win over No. 6 Auburn, putting its hosting chances back on the table

11by:Jake Thompson•05/16/25•

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Ole Miss outfielder Judd Utermark. Mandatory credit: Ole Miss athetics

The final day of the 2025 regular season could go many different ways, mostly positive, due to Ole Miss taking care of business the first two games of the final Southeastern Conference series of the season.

Get all that? It is a tad hard to follow but that is because the current jumble of teams the Rebels find themselves in is also hard to follow.

What is simple to know is that Ole Miss beat No. 6 Auburn, 15-11, on Friday to claim to win the series and continue to give itself an outside chance at still hosting a regional in two weeks.

The score is indicative to how Friday’s game went inside Oxford-University Stadium. The Rebels (37-17, 16-13 SEC) grabbed control of things early, roughing up Tigers ace Samuel Dutton for seven runs and knocking him out of the game after three innings.

Ole Miss had a 10-2 lead heading to the sixth inning but things then became interesting as Auburn outscored them 9-5 the final four innings.

The Rebels bullpen was not great with Gunnar Dennis giving up a hit and then immediately coming out of the game after one batter. Then Hudson Calhoun could not get an out, walking two batters, before coming out of the game, too.

Walker Hooks allowed two runs but did manage to get through an inning before turning it over to closer Connor Spencer with two outs in the eighth. Spencer then allowed a two-run home run to Ike Irish, the second long ball of the night for the Auburn catcher, and a RBI-single in the ninth but then closed it out for the series in.

All of those events led to Ole Miss currently owning the head-to-head over Auburn (37-17, 16-13) and part of a four-way tie for sixth place in the SEC standings with Tennessee and Alabama heading into the final day of the regular season.

What was a major positive for Ole Miss this weekend is the consistent offense at the plate and not relying on home runs.

The Rebels did hit three long balls today, two by Judd Utermark for three runs each, plus a solo shot by Will Furniss to give the team 100 home runs on the season. That is the second-best total in program history behind the 108 hit in 2022.

But for a second night the Rebels tallied double-digit hits with 13 and had a lot of manufactured runs the last two days.

Maybe the biggest stat is Ole Miss hitting .700 (7-for-10) with runners in scoring position for the night.

“Some of the guys are starting to swing it a little better and feel a little bit better ” Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco said. “That helps. Sometimes when it comes to a couple pieces or a couple pieces cooled down a little bit sometimes those guys are up with runners in scoring position. For what it’s worth I think we’ve had two really good nights, offensively.”

Now the Rebels have put themselves in a position to get to 17 SEC wins — giving them 18 in regular season due to the selection committee viewing the Governor’s Cup win over Mississippi State as a conference win — and put hosting back firmly on the table.

Only time will tell if next week’s SEC Tournament means anything or not to the decision makers come Memorial Day’s selection show, but take care of things on Saturday and that worry is not so much.

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