WATCH: Tim Elko, Ole Miss baseball now two wins away from Omaha and the College World Series
STAFF AND WIRE | Tim Elko and the Ole Miss baseball team received the last and final bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Now the Rebels are on their way to Super Regionals.
Ole Miss captured the Coral Gables Super Regional with a 22-6 win over Arizona on Monday, and they put up historic numbers in the process, including a program record for runs in a single postseason game.
“Super proud of my guys,” Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco said. “It hasn’t been an easy road for us for the last month. They’ve held it together and played really well.
“The (regional) field was one of the most difficult (in the tournament). We were just happy to be somewhere, but we played well. Very proud of our guys.”
Regional MVP Tim Elko was on fire all weekend long.
The three-time Ole Miss captain produced astonishing numbers.
Elko had a .778 batting average, as well as three doubles, three home runs and seven RBI. He tallied a 2.111 slugging percentage and a .857 on-base percentage.
Joining Elko on the all-tournament team was Peyton Chatagnier, who batted .538 with five extra base hits and a team-high 10 RBI over the weekend.
Chatagnier was 4-for-6 with six RBI and two runs scored on Monday.
Jacob Gonzalez also landed All-Regional honors. Same for Hunter Elliott and Brandon Johnson.
“I was just trying to put good swings on good pitches this weekend,” Elko said. “It was working well for me. It’s a lot easier to do well when you’ve got such a good support system around you and such other good hitters around you in the lineup. It makes hitting a lot easier.
“Props to the whole team for doing such a great job this weekend. Our pitching staff didn’t an amazing job as well.”
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Like they had all weekend, Elko and Chatagnier led the way on the night for the Rebels.
Elko reached and scored all six times at the plate. He tied the single-game runs record while smashing three home runs and posting five RBI.
Jack Dougherty earned the win out of the bullpen. He allowed two hits and a pair of walks over 2.1 innings. In total, the Rebel bullpen did not allow a single earned run over 12.1 innings down in Coral Gables.
“It’s a great moment. It doesn’t really matter what rank you are getting into the tournament or whatever,” Elko said. “We have full belief in ourselves. This is no surprise to us.
“We knew the whole season that we had a great team. Sure, we had a stretch where we weren’t playing our best baseball, but we never doubted ourselves. We never pointed fingers. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise to us.”
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Elko got the party started in the first inning.
He hammered a two-run shot the other way following Gonzalez’s walk. The Wildcats responded in kind, though, and Tanner O’Tremba tied the game with a two-run blast of his own.
Chatagner continued to light it up in regional play.
The Rebel veteran regained the lead for Ole Miss in the second, when he pulled a two-run homer a few feet inside of the foul pole for a 4-2 Ole Miss advantage.
Arizona cut the lead in half behind a Blake Paugh’s two-run home run to left, but Elko left the park for the second time and crushed a solo shot to regain the two-run advantage.
Arizona had another answer in the fourth.
Paugh went yard again with a two-run homer to deadlock the game at five runs apiece.
The tied would not last long.
Kevin Graham beat out an infield single with the bases load and, following a review, handed Ole Miss the lead back at 6-5. Second-year slugger Kemp Alderman clubbed a pitch to dead center for a no-doubt grand slam four pitches later to blow things open.
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From there, and much like Friday’s would-be regional opener, the floodgates opened.
Ole Miss scored eight runs in the sixth, highlighted by back-to-back two-run doubles from Chatagnier and Calvin Harris.
Elko plastered another pitch the next inning, going the other way yet again for his third homer of the game.
It was the first time in the slugger’s prolific Ole Miss career posting three home runs in a single game and the first time a Rebel has accomplished the feat in an NCAA Tournament game.
“I just want to win,” Elko said.
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Elko’s third homer set a single-season Ole Miss record with 22.
Arizona scored on an RBI single in the seventh.
However, Ole Miss put the finishing touches on the win in the ninth. Elko and Ben Van Cleve got on with a single and double, and Elko came around to score on Alderman’s infield single.
Chatagnier added the cherry on top with a rocket double to right-center to score Van Cleve and Alderman for the final tally.
“I know we have it in us,” to win in the postseason, Chatagnier said.
Jack Washburn came out of the bullpen in the ninth and set the Wildcats down quickly to send Ole Miss to its third-straight NCAA Super Regional.
The Rebels won’t have to go too far in the next round.
They’ll head to Hattiesburg for their super and take on a familiar foe in Southern Miss, and information on game times, etc., will be posted to OleMissSports.com when available.
“To watch them get this opportunity and take advantage of it and play so well, as a coach, that’s your reward,” Bianco said.
“To watch the kids play and succeed and sometimes fail like we did this year and pick themselves back up and put themselves back in position to succeed again.”
