Ole Miss starts its postseason run as the 7 seed in next week's SEC Baseball Tournament
The Southeastern Conference Baseball Tournament holds significance for Ole Miss but a different kind than the last three years.
Since 2022 the SEC Tournament has held a do-or-die edge to it with the Rebels needing a lengthy stay to keep its season going and earn an at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament’s 64-team field.
In 2022 it was a late-night loss to Vanderbilt in the first round, which should have ended the year but of course Ole Miss was the last team in and then the last to turn out the lights and winning the program’s first national championship.
The same cannot be said for the following two years. In 2023 the Rebels joined Mississippi State as the two teams to not make it to Hoover and the previous two national title holders missing the postseason altogether. Last year the Bulldogs handed Ole Miss a walk-off loss in the first round and missed a second straight NCAA Tournament.
This year is different. The Rebels (37-18, 16-14 SEC) are safely in the SEC Tournament field, though all 16 teams go this year, and have a first round bye as the 7 Seed. They will start on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. CT, playing the winner between 10 Seed Florida and 15 Seed South Carolina.
If Ole Miss can win its second round game it will earn a day off and play its quarterfinal game against 2 Seed Arkansas on Friday at 3 p.m. CT.
After being picked to finish 15th in the preseason by league coaches Ole Miss bested that projection by eight spots. The Rebels had its first winning record in SEC play for the first time since 2021.
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“There’s good and bad with everything and it’s one of those years where it tested us,” Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco said on Saturday. “You don’t just get these show up medals, but you got to be able to compete in this league and this league’s relentless. I’m proud of our guys. We’ve had days like this and we’ve had games get away from us when we’ve had the lead.”
Ole Miss heads to Hoover as a bubble team to host a regional.
The Rebels are 18 in the RPI after Saturday’s games and are No. 10 in strength of schedule. They have 16 Quad 1 wins and only Texas has more with 17.
Completing the sweep of No. 6 Auburn would have gotten Ole Miss to 17 SEC wins, a number that is usually never ignored by the selection committee when it comes to handing out the 16 host bids. Will a win or two in the SEC Tournament mean anything in terms of boosting the résumé of the Rebels?
All to be determined.
“We’ve beaten a lot of good people and I don’t think anybody in that dugout needed that this weekend,” Bianco added. “Meaning to show that we can could beat anybody in the country. I think we’ve always felt that, but it was probably good for everybody else to see that as well. That we’re a good team when we play well and we show up, we play hard, we can play with anybody.”
