How to perceive the breath of life Ole Miss received
Is it prolonging the inevitable? Probably. Does that matter right now? Not really
We’ve got a new podcast out with Collin Brister discussing how Ole Miss got into the NCAA Tournament, what it means and the Rebels’ chances at making a run. You can check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
We have a whole hell of a lot to discuss today.
Ole Miss gets into NCAA Tournament as last team in the field
The Ole Miss Rebels are headed to the NCAA Tournament. That’s a statement that seemed like virtual certainty in February, close to a guarantee in March, a dicey proposition in April and a pipe dream when the calendar turned to May.
It felt like all of those things wrapped into one in the seven days since we’ve last spoken and since the last time Ole Miss played a baseball game. Isn’t it sort of fitting? The Rebels were the last team admitted in to the field, according to the NCAA Tournament selection committee.
A tumultuous week began with a rather predictable-looking 3-1 loss to Vanderbilt late on a Tuesday evening in the single-elimination portion of the SEC Tournament. While that game feels wholly irrelevant to break down and discuss now, if that had in fact been this team’s final game, wouldn’t have it been a rather fitting ending to this season? Ole Miss gets a competitive performance from a fatigued Dylan DeLucia, the bullpen keeps the Rebels in the game despite a slew of missed opportunities at the plate, and they lose despite those efforts on the mound because the offense was 1-18 with runners on base and 1-6 with runners in scoring position? Where have you seen that movie before? If that would’ve ended up being this team’s final game, the loss would’ve painted a pretty accurate picture as to why, as well as how, this group fell to this point.
But it wasn’t, and the Rebels now have new life. In fact, they are as equally as alive as the other 63 teams in this sport who have not yet put the bats and balls away for a long summer of wondering what could’ve been and what needs to change. You could make a strong argument that Ole Miss is only a handful of days away from that reality, and that this stroke of good fortune from a group of suits in a conference room only prolonged the inevitable, but that isn’t really the point right now. Ole Miss is in the NCAA Tournament and received what I believe is a fairly reasonable draw.
How did this happen?
I am not entirely sure how to answer this question. Over the final three weeks of the regular season, I repeatedly wrote that I believed that 14 regular season SEC wins plus the Governor’s Cup victory would be enough for Ole Miss to feel good about its chances of earning an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament. There was enough recent precedent on my side, the RPI seemed to back up that assertion, and a relatively weak bubble hardly looked threatening. While I suppose I was technically correct in that assessment, it would be disingenuous for me to take an ‘I told you so’ victory lap in this space, because it was far from a certainty. By Monday morning, it seemed pretty unlikely.
Why? Well, that weak bubble shrunk.
On Wednesday morning, a few hours after the loss to Vanderbilt, I still thought Ole Miss was fine. I thought they’d done enough and were sitting favorably enough amongst the NCAA Tournament bubble landscape that it did not have much to worry about. I had the benefit of doing a podcast with a bracketology nerd (I mean this as a compliment) in Collin, who, if you are a podcast listener, you heard him do a terrific job breaking down the bubble on a podcast we recorded last Wednesday night and released on Thursday morning. He knows way more about all of this than me and I am grateful to have him as a resource. Collin ran a ‘bubble watch’ excel spreadsheet that he updated throughout the week. On Wednesday, Ole Miss still looked fine. It was (somewhat) much of the same on Thursday, despite national college baseball sites having the Rebels as one of the last four teams in the field. Friday got a little more dicey.
Saturday saw San Diego beat Gonzaga for a presumed bid-stealing conference tournament win, and Southern Illinois upset Dallas Baptist in the semifinal of the Missouri Valley Tournament. The bubble was shrinking.
For those of you that might be new here, the NCAA Tournament ‘bubble’ is a term to describe the collection of 10(ish) teams in the running for the final 6-8(ish) into the NCAA Tournament each year. The 64-team tournament hands out 33 bids based on ‘merit,’ or who the selection committee thinks is most deserving of a spot in their tournament based on a variety of factors that comprise a team’s resumé. There are 31 automatic bids awarded to winners of the 31 conference tournaments. Makes sense, right? 33 + 31 = 64
But not all conferences are created equal. Florida, for example, is going to have a much better chance at earning an at-large bid playing the SEC than an Ivy League school (because of competition, strength of schedule, talent ect.) So, when it comes to the conference tournament, teams on the proverbial bubble want prohibited favorites in smaller leagues (like Gonzaga)— who would probably get an at-large bid even if that team doesn’t win their conference tournament — to win the tournament to take one of the automatic bids instead of using up one of the 33 at-large bids. Gonzaga didn’t win its conference tournament but was good enough to get an at-large bid. That’s not the case with San Diego. The only reason San Diego is in the NCAA Tournament is because it beat Gonzaga to win the West Coast Conference Tournament. So, when the Toreros beat Gonzaga, it ‘shrunk’ the bubble by one spot, if that makes sense because Gonzaga received one of the 33 at-large bids instead of eating up an automatic bid. I realize that might be explaining the obvious to some, but many don’t understand how that actually works. Don’t feel dumb if you don’t. Half the clowns in this racket that is the content business don’t either but pretend to. Hell, I am still learning lessons from it each year.
Anyway, Sunday felt like the death knell when Louisiana-Lafayette (a team who wouldn’t have earned an at-large birth) defeated Georgia Southern (an at-large lock and a regional host!) in the Sun Belt Conference Championship, followed by Louisiana Tech (same boat as ULL) upsetting bubble team Texas-San Antonio (bubble team) in the Conference USA Tournament, coupled with a few others like Michigan and Kennesaw State winning their respective conference tournaments. In short, the bubble seemingly shrunk by six spots over the final three days of the season. That’s not exactly common. It’s also not something Ole Miss could afford to happen and left the Rebels on the outside looking in as Selection Monday arrived.
So, again you ask, what happened?
I am not a wagering man (if you are, use SkyBox), but I would’ve bet a significant amount on Sunday night that Ole Miss was not going to get into the NCAA Tournament and that the Mike Bianco era was over. The metrics just didn’t seem to add up, even though I told all of you for weeks that 15 total SEC wins (14 plus the Governor’s Cup) was enough to get this team in the Tournament. The bubble shrunk way more than I thought it would, the Rebels’ RPI was slightly higher than I figured it would be, and there simply didn’t seem to be enough seats at the table. D1Baseball, a website I once interned for and strongly believe is the best national resource for college baseball on the market, didn’t even have Ole Miss among its ‘first four teams out’ of the field, but was rather in the ‘next four out’ category. That’s not a knock on the site or the tremendous work Kendall Rogers, Aaron Fitt and the rest of the team at D1 do, but is more so evidence of how fortunate Ole Miss got.
When the 64-team field was announced just before noon on Memorial Day, Ole Miss was listed among them. How? I really don’t know. The selection committee has a tendency to vary on which metrics they value on a yearly basis. Sort of like a roulette wheel, they seem pick one each year to really emphasize. This year, it appeared pretty obvious that roulette wheel landed on non-conference strength of schedule. Ole Miss’ was a pretty pedestrian 94, but that’s better than a lot of other teams on the bubble. I still don’t believe that stood out enough to put the Rebels in.
Honestly, and I won’t go full conspiracy theory on you, though I am not even sure that is an apt description for the most extreme version of this, but I believe that Mississippi State Athletic Director John Cohen being on the NCAA Tournament selection committee absolutely did not hurt the Rebels. Read into that what you wish.
I think NC State was more deserving of a bid than Ole Miss, Grand Canyon and Liberty. I think Rutgers had a decent case. Ole Miss will draw the most ire in terms of comparisons because it’s a power five program, but if we are being honest, Grand Canyon had no business being one of the last four teams selected, though NC State is really the only team with a legitimate grip of being the victim total screw job.
So, what’s to make of all of this? The way I see it, you, the Ole Miss fan reading, shouldn’t feel bad about it. The Rebels have gotten more crappy breaks via the selection committee than good ones through the years. A win over Vanderbilt last Tuesday made the Rebels’ bulletproof in terms of earning a bid. A loss left them susceptible to the bid stealers and the metrics roulette wheel. They luckily came out on the correct side of it. So, now what do they do with this newfound breath of life?
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Ole Miss got a pretty fortunate draw
I guess I buried the lede here, but Ole Miss is the No. 3 seed in the Coral Gables Regional, hosted by Miami. The Rebels will play No. 2 seed Arizona on Friday night at 6 p.m., weather permitting. Caniscius is the No. 4 seed in this regional and will try to upset the Hurricanes at 11 a.m. on Friday. All things considered, this was a pretty favorable draw for Ole Miss. Miami is a better team. Arizona probably is, too. But it’s not like Ole Miss got sent to Corvallis or Palo Alto to face the buzz saw pitching staffs of Stanford or Oregon State. You could make the argument that the Rebels won’t face a starting pitcher in this regional that is better than any of the nine Mizzou, LSU and Texas A&M had to offer over the final three weeks of the season. Connor Noland of Arkansas and Mississippi State’s Preston Johnson aren’t far off from anything Miami or Arizona will run out there either.
I will have a more in-depth regional preview sent to your inboxes by Thursday morning to get all of you prepared, but my early impressions are that this is a pretty good draw for this team. The main thing that held Ole Miss back this year (outside of horrid defense) was the inability to hit quality starting pitching. The Rebels won’t face a lot of that in this regional. And, when you look at which regional this one is paired with: the Hattiesburg Regional that includes Southern Miss, LSU, Kennesaw State and Army, the same could be said for those teams as well. Ole Miss destroyed LSU’s pitching staff three weeks ago.
Have I excited you yet? Well, prepared to have your mood dampened. I am not picking Ole Miss to get out of this regional. Miami and Arizona have more consistent offenses, comparable pitching staffs and don’t play horrific defense. Nothing this Ole Miss team has shown over the last three months would lead me to believe they will play consistent enough baseball to win this regional. Tomorrows are seldom in June baseball. Mistakes are amplified to the point of costing teams the right to suit up the next day. This team does too much dumb stuff to be confident in their ability to win this regional.
With that said, I still believe the best version of this Ole Miss team is better than a lot of others in this tournament, and potentially better than the other three teams in this regional, but it hasn’t come out often enough for that statement to be anything other than an unprovable hypothetical that borders on being delusional. But hey, they went 8-3 down the stretch just to get here, so who knows. My point is that Ole Miss could’ve ended up in a far worse situation than this.
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What does this mean for the present and future?
Ole Miss spent five-and-a-half days in purgatory, not knowing whether or not the loss to Vanderbilt in Hoover would be the last time this confounding group ever played baseball together. As we went over, it certainly appeared that way for a bit, but more consistent play in the final 11 games of the season aided by some good fortune from the selection committee gave them new life.
Does this change anything with regard to the long term future of the program? I believe the answer is no, outside of a deep postseason run. Call it an educated opinion and read into it as you wish, but I do not believe that Ole Miss sneaking into the NCAA Tournament, in a year in which it was once the No. 1 ranked team in the country and considered a favorite to be a top eight national seed, is good enough to bring Mike Bianco back as the head coach in 2023. This regular season was a failure of catastrophic proportions. There is no way around that, and Bianco, fair or unfair in a vacuum, will either answer for it or rectify it with the program’s second College World Series birth during his tenure (or damn close to it).
I have read enough of the RebelGrove message board to become aware of the debate about whether or not fans should root for Ole Miss to lose to ensure a head coaching change. I am not going to insult your collective intelligence by telling you how to feel. I find that unimpressive and silly when media members and content people do that.
To a degree, I understand the headspace of the Ole Miss fan that wishes this nightmarish season had come to an end on Monday in order to remove any doubt regarding a decision on Bianco’s future. From another Super Regional disappointment in Tucson, Arizona last June, to the incredibly idiotic handling of the LSU job interview saga, the last 11.5 months haven’t exactly been lucrative for Bianco stockholders, and I think it’s likely that all Monday’s good news did was prolong the inevitable for a week
But at the end of the day, Ole Miss technically did enough to get into the NCAA Tournament. As bad as this regular season was, the Rebels earned the right to rectify it by collecting five (or six) wins over a two-week stretch in June, as far-fetched as it may seem. This year has been the inverse of what the Bianco era has taught Ole Miss fans to believe. His teams never suck. The average ones fizzled out in road regionals (Bianco never winning a road regional is an underrated blemish on his resumé at Ole Miss, in my opinion) and the really good ones knocked on the door of greatness, but mostly fell just short, outside of the 2014 team. The absolutes have kind of been just that in the Bianco era: absolutes — with the only alternative being disappointment. But that doesn’t really reflect what this sport is by nature, which is, well, a tendency to get weird.
Ole Miss has never dramatically overachieved in a postseason, but that doesn’t mean it’s uncommon for that to happen within the landscape of college baseball as a whole. Will this team be different? I doubt it, but they earned the right to try. Allow me to make the case for them succeeding. Look at this reaction to them getting into the NCAA Tournament.
We’ve questioned this confusing and dysfunctional team a lot this year. Are they soft? Is the offense fraudulent? Are they just bad? Have they quit? All of those questions were relevant at some point, except for maybe the last one. I don’t think Ole Miss ever threw in the towel. Unless they are the world’s best actors, the Rebels looked like a group who was elated to learn they earned the right to step outside the Dugout Club and practice again together. The 11 days between games will be the longest time off this team has had off since before the season. Is there anything to the idea that being a reset button for Ole Miss? The weight of failing to meet lofty regular season expectations matters very little now. Yes, the path is more difficult, but it’s still the same length. Could there be a collective exhale that they are in and that end up being a freeing revelation? Maybe. It won’t make them field or hit breaking balls better, but it could change their mental makeup a bit.
This program’s future will work itself out. There isn’t a ton of gray area here. Ole Miss has to make it out of a regional at minimum for Bianco to save his job. I feel pretty confident in that. Now, if the Rebels accomplish that feat but lose yet again in a Super Regional, well, then we have a complicated situation on our hands. Is one Omaha appearance in 22 years acceptable? Is firing a coach who made three straight Super Regionals at a program that had little history or before he arrived a prudent move? Embrace debate! The message boards would be a disaster in that unlikely scenario.
In all likelihood, all of this is just prolonging the inevitable for a week. But if you are an Ole Miss fan, why not just enjoy the ride and dare to be proven wrong?
On the horizon:
Coral Gables Regional scouting report
Regional picks
Some golf content
That’s all from me today. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Send to your friends and tell them to join in on the fun by smashing the subscribe button below. It is free.