An Omaha opener against a familiar foe
An Auburn scouting report, some Bianco thoughts and Hayden Buckley's remarkable run at the U.S. Open.
We’ve got a new podcast out with Collin Brister previewing Ole Miss’ College World Series opener against Auburn, the bracket as a whole and more. You can check that out here or anywhere you get your podcasts.
We’ve got a lot of baseball and some golf to get to today.
Ole Miss faces familiar foe Auburn in CWS opener
Ole Miss will play its first College World Series game in eight years on Saturday evening. The Rebels face Auburn to open what is a pretty favorable side of the bracket. None of what I say here should be construed as discounting this team’s run and the brand of baseball it has played, but Ole Miss has had a pretty fortuitous path to get to this point, and the path to the playing for a national championship is as favorable as you could possibly ask for at this point. The Rebels’ side of the bracket includes:
An Auburn team they took a series from on the road.
An Arkansas club that they very easily could’ve swept in Fayetteville. Quite frankly, I am still not sure how Ole Miss didn’t at least take two in that series. I periodically check the schedule to make sure what I watched was real that weekend and that the Rebels did in fact find a way to somehow let that series get away. It sort of defies logic.
A Stanford team that is really good, pitches the hell out of the ball but doesn’t really have an overwhelmingly dominant arm. The Cardinal are probably the toughest of the three opponents Ole Miss faces on this side of the bracket.
Again, none of that should negate this run or discount any of these formidable opponents. My point is simply that the path to playing for national title is reasonable and that this College World Series is as wide open as any in recent memory. Thanks to Notre Dame slaying the giant that was Tennessee in Knoxville last week, there really isn’t a prohibitive favorite. I think Texas is probably the best team of the eight. I also believe the other side of the bracket to be the tougher one, but who knows. It’ll be a fascinating ten days.
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Auburn scouting report
How long ago does that SEC-opening series feel? On Thursday, Mike Bianco was asked about this whirlwind of a season. He answered by saying that this team has been ‘to hell and back’. That Auburn series feels as if it occurred when the Rebels were beginning their free fall toward hell, even if they realize it in the moment. Ole Miss won that series, but the cracks in the armor were becoming visible despite taking two of three. All of that is irrelevant now. I don’t think you can really take much from that series. Ole Miss isn’t even going to face one of the three starting pitchers it saw in March. Auburn is still kind of the same team it was in March, but is a slightly better version. The Rebels, of course, are a drastically different club than they were three months ago. Here are a few things to watch.
RHP Gonzalez to start for Auburn
Auburn is going with sophomore right-hander Joseph Gonzalez. The main reason Ole Miss didn’t see Gonzalez when these teams first met is because he missed the first two weekends of SEC play due to a blister. He’s a low 90s right-hander with a decent changeup and breaking ball. There isn’t a ton of swing-and-miss potential. Gonzalez doesn’t walk folks and challenges hitters to make solid contact. That’ll play well in a cavernous ballpark like Charles Schwab Field.
Auburn has basically used some combination of Gonzalez, Mason Barnett, Trace Bright and Hayden Mullins to comprise its weekend rotation throughout the season. Barnett was pulled for a couple of weekends due to poor performance. Mullins is the lone left-hander of the group and was the one that gave Ole Miss trouble in the game two loss in the regular season. Mullins only allowed a run on four hits and stranded a small village on the base path over five innings. He injured his forearm in the Tennessee series and is out for the year. I don’t know this for certain, but I would guess there would’ve been a decent chance Ole Miss saw the lefty Mullins if he were still available.
Gonzalez isn’t as good as either of the starter the Rebels faced last weekend. But at a certain point, the results don’t really lie despite a lack of eye-popping individual statistics. Of the seven SEC starts Gonzalez made, he completed six innings in five of them and completed five innings in 6 of the 7 starts.
It’s sort of the same story as what we discussed this time last week. If the Ole Miss offense continues to perform the way it has in the postseason, the Rebels will have success against Gonzalez. If they revert back to some of the deficiencies that plagued them through much of the SEC slate, such as too much swing-and-miss, an inability to move runners and a lack of situational awareness, it’s going to be a tough day at the ballpark. That’s partially why I think last weekend’s offensive output was significant beyond the scoreboard result. The Rebels scored 15 runs over two games and needed just one solo home run to do it. That was not always the case for an offense that lived and died by at its worst moments. You can’t really do that at Charles Schwab Field. Moving the baseball is a must.
I tend to believe this offense has turned a corner and will perform like it did last week. I suppose we shall see.
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Auburn is a fascinating team
If you took a peek at the Tigers’ statistics in terms of how they stacked up against the 13 other SEC teams, but didn’t know their record, you’d likely guess they were a borderline NCAA Tournament team.
In SEC play, Auburn ranked 7th in batting average, 10th in slugging and 5th in on-base percentage. The Tigers ranked 10th in team ERA, 11th in strikeouts, 9th in hits allowed and 10th in runs allowed.
On paper, this team doesn’t do anything exceptionally well. So, how are they here? Well, for one, they have an elite coach in Butch Thompson. What he’s done with this program is as impressive as any coaching job in the sport. He is arguably the second or third best coach in college baseball given the resources he has at his disposal.
Outside of that, Auburn is just one of those teams that knows how to win games. I realize that isn’t really hard-hitting analysis, but it’s the truth. The Tigers have a terrific closer Blake Burkhalter, a couple of good arms in the bullpen to bridge the game to him, and a lineup that does enough at the plate while playing pretty good defense. In some ways, these are the most dangerous teams in June, when the smallest of mistakes can end a season. Auburn is 32-2 when leading after seven innings, 35-2 when leading after eight innings and is 9-4 in one-run games. One stat to monitor is that the Tigers are 36-10 when they score four or more runs and 4-9 when they score fewer than four runs. The Tigers are just 4-14 when trailing after seven innings.
Basically, if the Tigers get a lead, they are going to hold onto it. If they are trailing late, the offense usually isn’t potent enough to mount a comeback.
DiChiara is the hitter to watch
Sonny DiChiara is by far the scariest hitter in this Auburn lineup. He led the SEC in batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage and OPS. DiChaira doesn’t strikeout and led the league in walks. He is a terrific hitter and a menacing threat each time he steps into the box. Ole Miss will need to handle him delicately.
Blake Rambusch is a good gap-to-gap hitter, but outside of those two, it is a pretty manageable lineup. With the way Ole Miss has pitched the baseball throughout this postseason, I, much like last week, believe that this game will fall squarely on the shoulders of the offense. If the Rebels can put up five or six runs, they are going to win this game.
Some random, final thoughts
I am curious to see how Bianco handles lineup construction. This is a large ballpark with a big outfield. The last time Ole Miss was here was really the last time the program had an outfield that was a defensive strength. Does he continue to sit Leatherwood in favor of Harris? Does he play a (presumably) slightly more healthy McCants? Or does he stick with Garrett Wood at third base and Justin Bench center field. Maybe McCants plays right field and the former two remain the same. I don’t think any sweeping adjustments are necessary just because this is a larger ballpark, but I do think it will factor into the thought process a little bit more.
As I mentioned earlier, Mike Bianco described insane season as having gone through ‘hell and back.’ In the five years I covered the program, I never really heard Bianco talk like that. He’s not really one to reflect on the journey while it’s still underway. He’s also not really one to admit how bad things were.
I think the last couple of weeks have shown a little bit of a difference side of No. 5. He seems to genuinely being enjoying this ride and appreciate the moment, almost as if he doesn’t really understand exactly how this unfolding the way it is. I don’t mean that in the sense that he thought this team sucked and that it makes no sense why they are doing this. I suppose I just mean it from the standpoint of him not really having to do anything differently. It wasn’t Bianco’s fault that this team was 7-14 leaving Fayetteville, Arkansas at the end of April. He wasn’t pushing any incorrect buttons or playing anyone out of place. The team simply wasn’t performing up to its potential. He also didn’t do anything drastically different when this postseason run took shape. A confounding group finally took flight. It was fortuitous timing for them and Bianco. It’s really as simple as that.
And with all of the postseason heartbreak Bianco has endured in the two decades he’s been in charge, this entire run is sort of the inverse of what he’s used to experiencing. He’s had countless teams excel and overachieve in the regular season, only to disappoint in the postseason. This team underachieved in the regular season to a level the program has never stooped to under Bianco and is now achieving heights the program hasn’t reached under his guidance — winning a road regional and sweeping super regional.
“It was a little different walking into the stadium,” Bianco said. “I think I appreciated watching the kids walk into the stadium. Not just Tim (Elko). But Graham, Bench and Cioffi. Guys like that have won a lot of games here but have never played in this stadium. To watch them walk in, take pictures.. It’s been really cool to see.”
Bianco looks like a man enjoying on a wild, beautiful ride. I think he enjoys being around this team a lot. I think that was the case even when things were going poorly. He wasn’t up-tight and cranky like he sometimes is in the midst of losing a lot. Bianco’s shown a relaxed nature throughout the entirety of this rollercoaster ride. I think he gets joy out of seeing them reach their potential, even if it took them being down to, quite literally, their last shot (which was also his last shot). I also think he believes this team can win the whole thing. It’d be hard not to smile more having that feeling.
“This has been a really cool story to this point,” Bianco said. “To watch them get through all of this, from the very high at the beginning of the season, to about as low as you can get, it’s a great story. That’s genuine happiness and fulfillment.”
Prediction: I think Ole Miss beats Auburn. We will talk again before that, so I won’t go past that.
Buckley in contention at the U.S. Open
As I wrote this newsletter on a Friday afternoon, it took longer than it normally does. That’s mostly due to Tupelo native and Mizzou alum Hayden Buckley doing what he did at the U.S. Open. Buckley fired a pair of 68s, and birdied four of his final seven holes at Brookline in Boston. When Buckley hit a four-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole, he shared the lead at 4-under par with Collin Morikawa. Buckley now sits one behind Morikawa and Joel Dahmen heading into Saturday.
Just to get to this point, Buckley had to win a 5 person for 1 spot playoff at sectional qualifying. He birdied the first hole to qualify for the U.S. Open for the second year in a row. After a terrific start to his rookie season on the PGA Tour, one that’s included three top-12 finishes, he’s been mired in a slump. Buckley has made just one cut since the end of March and sits 112th in the FedEx Cup Standings (top 125 retain their PGA Tour card for next year). Beyond the allure and accomplishment of being in contention at a U.S. Open, this is a massive week for Buckley’s immediate future, too. His story is a remarkable one that we’ve documented in detail here. It will be surreal watching him compete against Morikawa, Jon Rham and Rory McIlroy on Saturday in pursuit of a major championship. I cannot wait to watch and am very happy for my friend.


Hattiesburg native and Alabama alum Davis Riley sits in a tie for 16th and is just four back at 1-under. Mississippians continue make waves in professional golf. Riley is a budding superstar. He’s coming off a t-13 finish at the PGA Championship last month.
I cannot wait to write about major champion Hayden Buckley on Monday.
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On the horizon
Reaction newsletter Sunday
Podcast with Collin Brister
Golf coverage throughout the weekend.
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