Ole Miss has a pulse. How does it keep it?
Mizzou sweep keeps the Rebels' postseason hopes alive, plus a basketball transfer pickup
We’ve got a new podcast out that features our usual Sunday SEC Baseball conversation with Collin Brister on Ole Miss’ sweep of Missouri, what was real and what wasn’t, what the Rebels need to do to earn a postseason birth and much more. You can check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
We have much of the same and more to get to today.
Editor’s note: this newsletter has been a little sparse lately due to travel, the grease industry and some side projects, but we will be back full speed ahead this week.
Rebels sweep Mizzou to creep back into the postseason picture.
Ole Miss swept Missouri over the weekend for its first home SEC series win of the season. The issue for the Rebels is that it came in the month of May. Their abysmal home conference record of 4-8 (previously 1-8) is the predominant, results-oriented reason this team is in the position it is in entering the final two weeks of the season. But to the Rebels' everlasting credit, their resolve and refusal to quit when the season was in the middle of a complete free fall is why they now have a realistic chance to make the NCAA Tournament.
Let's have a (late) look at how it happened.
What was real and what wasn’t?
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Missouri is a bad baseball team. The Tigers have a decent offense that has made them competitive in their home ballpark, but they are winless on the road in conference play this year (in fairness, that was only one fewer win than Ole Miss had at home entering this series). On the surface, the Rebels sweeping the worst team in the Southeastern Conference — and undeniably the worst program in the conference. Mizzou doesn’t pretend to care about baseball. I almost respect how obvious they make it, too — isn’t newsworthy. But as the old adage goes, good teams take care business against of bad teams. While I wouldn’t classify Ole Miss as the former, Mizzou is certainly the latter and the Rebels at least looked more like a good baseball team over the weekend. The theme of this content item will be this: multiple things can be true at once. The Tigers are bad, but the Rebels do deserve credit for taking care of their business and reviving their slim postseason hopes. Here’s what I thought was real.
The starting pitching is solved, at least to the point of competence.
Ole Miss swept a series in which Dylan Delucia produced the worst outing of any of the three starters. To put that in perspective, Ole Miss hadn’t won an SEC game DeLucia didn’t pitch in since April 3, and had only won two conference games total in which DeLucia did not pitch. The Rebels’ newfound ace labored mightily, needing 111 pitches to record just 12 outs. He struggled to locate pitches and Missouri tagged him for three runs on eight hits as a result. Could it be chalked up to fatigue? Possibly. DeLucia entered the outing having thrown 340 pitches in his last three outings and left with a total of 451 in his last four. I’d like to see another spotty start before seriously considering fatigue, but it is something to think about. And in fairness, DeLucia still scrapped and clawed to get Ole Miss to the fifth, including escaping the first inning with only two runs of damage in a frame that could’ve proved to be disastrous.
Beyond DeLucia, Hunter Elliott completed six innings for the second consecutive week. Elliott has pitched well for over a month now. His defense let him down a couple of times when he first entered the rotation. Now, it seems like he finally is seeing the results match the performance. If he continues to pitch this way, I’ll just say this: Ole Miss has put teams in the NCAA Tournament with far worse one-two punches than DeLucia-Elliott.
Derek Diamond reached fifth inning for the fourth time in his last five starts. That’s plenty good enough to win in game three of any series. And though it’s not what he was supposed to be when he arrived on campus, Ole Miss has a serviceable third starter in Diamond if his length of his leash is managed properly.
As we have discussed before, Mike Bianco almost always finds away to figure out a competitive rotation. While I understand that most of you reading this probably aren’t chomping at the bit to pat the guy on the back, he does deserve some credit for figuring what looked like a completely incompetent starting pitching situation for the first three weeks of SEC play. Ole Miss’ record is what is more so because of a woefully underwhelming offense than it is a pitching staff that took three weeks to work out the kinks. We’ll get to this later, but if you’re asking me to give a reason why I think Ole Miss has a shot to make the NCAA Tournament, it’s because the rotation is no longer putting the offense in early holes to climb out of against good arms on the other team.
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This team appears to have some form of resolve.
When Ole Miss was swept at home by Tennessee and Alabama, gave away a series at South Carolina and was throttled by Southeast Missouri State in an embarrassing midweek loss, we (justifiably) questioned the toughness of this group. But in the two weeks that led into last weekend’s series, it became clear that. while immensely flawed, the Rebels hadn’t folded. They weren’t losing games by waving the white flag. They were losing games simply because they were a bad baseball team. Now, is this the toughest team of the Bianco era? Of course not. There are plenty of blemishes in that area. Bianco alluded to that after the Arkansas series loss, defining toughness through the lens of situational hitting, not swinging at ball four and moving runners over.
That aside, it remains clear that Ole Miss hasn’t folded. Things looked really dire during the top half of the first inning of Friday night’s game. DeLucia had given up two runs, the bases were loaded and it appeared this already disastrous season that many thought had already reached rock bottom was about to somehow sink down to another level. Instead, DeLucia got a break on a pitch off the plate to escape the jam and the offense immediately responded. My podcast co-host Collin has pointed out many times that Ole Miss had lost every single SEC game it trailed in at any point other than the conference opener at Auburn. While these aren’t exactly the cardiac kids, the Rebels overcame two first-inning deficits in back-to-back games they had to win. That’s somewhat significant.
This group is flawed but not defeated. The Rebels entered this series at 7-14, with little hope to play June baseball and no guarantee their season would extend past senior day. Instead of wilting, it found a way to earn a sweep and claw back into the postseason picture. Again, Missouri is bad, but Ole Miss entered the weekend with the same record as the Tigers, yet managed to do something it hasn’t done all year in SEC play: win a series at home. Who knows if it ends up mattering in the end. This all may be meaningless the next time I write a weekend recap, but it could’ve ended with a whimper against a terrible team and a sparsely-filled stadium. Instead, this team’s postseason life will extend one more week. There’s something to be said for that.
What might be real?
Here’s what could be real, but I would like to see again.
The offense looked like… a good offense?
On the heels of what has to be one of the worst situational hitting displays to ever disgrace televisions screens last week at Arkansas, Ole Miss looked like a pretty decent offense at the plate. The Missouri pitching staff isn’t any good, but then again, neither was Mississippi State’s, South Carolina’s or Kentucky’s.
The Rebels plated 25 runs on the weekend and only need three home runs to do it — two of those by Kevin Graham in a Sunday game that was already a rout. I am old enough to remember watching Ole Miss belt eight home runs in a series that was a non-competitive Alabama sweep.
Ole Miss was 11-33 with runners in scoring position on the weekend and 18-54 with men on base. They were 10-15 with runners on third with less than two outs. That unfamiliar smell you’re smelling is called competence. Those numbers will hunt. This lineup just looked like it had a better approach at the plate. Ole Miss totaled 27 singles and five doubles. While this might sound like a weird statistic, 32 of the 35 hits the Rebels smacked staying in the yard feels like progress in a weird way.
As I said at the top, I have no idea how real this is. We’ve seen much more bad than good from this lineup, but it certainly looked like a different brand of baseball, and that it’s likely not a coincidence the best result of the season accompanied it.
Final series thoughts:
Good on Ole Miss for fighting to keep its season alive. The Rebels will play meaningful baseball for one more week. A team that could’ve easily wilted played good baseball. It might all be meaningless in five days, and an NCAA Tournament birth doesn’t change Bianco’s presumed fate on its own, but it would present an opportunity to change it. So, what do they need to do to get there?
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The path to an NCAA Tournament bid:
The power of a sweep in this sport never ceases to amaze me. Whether it was the 2016 team somehow going 18-12 (and absolutely should’ve been a top eight seed but was robbed by the committee in favor of some purple and gold uniforms because tradition, or something like that) because it swept three times, or the very average 2015 team sweeping State to somehow secure a postseason birth with a week to spare, the sweep can change fortunes fast. Think about how bad this season has looked and been at times. You don’t have to think too hard. Yet, now Ole Miss is 10-14 in the SEC with two weekends remaining and the chance to all but cement a postseason bid with two series wins.DO NOT misconstrue that with me thinking this team will do it or that an NCAA Tournament bid is on the precipice of certainty, I am simply just pointing out that in three day’s time, it went from a math-defying miracle to a plausible outcome. This team is more alive than many, myself included given what I have written over the last month, would probably like to admit.
Here’s what you need to know:
Ole Miss’ RPI, as of this writing is 53. It has moved up three spots since Sunday without the Rebels gripping a baseball bat. That number isn’t great, but it is far from a death knell. Ole Miss needs to get its RPI below 40 to feel great about its chances of earning an at-large bid. I am far from a nerd and was a terrible math student. I am not about to pretend I know where X amount of wins against Y team will place Ole Miss’ RPI, but I do feel pretty confident in saying that two wins apiece over Texas A&M and LSU will get the Rebels in the neighborhood.
Then there is the midweek kicker: Ole Miss has a golden opportunity to boost its RPI on Wednesday night against at Southern Miss in Hattiesburg. The Golden Eagles are ranked 14th in the country and were 7th the week prior, before a series loss to Old Dominion. USM has an RPI of 18. The Golden Eagles will host a regional (that Ole Miss might be in), barring a late-season collapse. A loss Wednesday won’t hurt Ole Miss much at all, but a win would serve as a mini-launch pad to help the Rebels’ RPI creep up a few spots.
Think of it as a bonus question on a test that you didn’t study for — it might be the difference between passing and failing. (That’s what this season is, in a lot of ways. It didn’t have to be this way. Ole Miss is the kid that took a couple too many bong rips in the dorm and realized he somehow had a D- in freshman E.D.H.E in mid-October. There is still time to recover, but there is no margin for error.)
With all that laid out, I do think Ole Miss needs to win its last two series to feel great about its chances of making the NCAA Tournament, or at least without leaving work to be done in Hoover at the SEC Tournament. That would put them at 14-16 in conference play, and really 15-16 because the selection committee counts the Governor’s Cup as a conference game. That should be more than enough.
Now, is there a way Ole Miss could lose two of three at LSU, take two from A&M at home (or vice versa I guess) and get in at 13-17 (14-17 in the eyes of the committee)? Yes, that is certainly possible. But I think that would mean that Ole Miss would need to win at least one game in Hoover and maybe two. I don’t think that is good enough on its own for them to get with a one-and-done showing at the SEC Tournament.
So, there is the path outlined for you. Texas A&M and LSU are good ballclubs. Ole Miss hasn’t beaten very many good ballclubs this year. But the Rebels are coming off their best weekend of the year, one in which they showed flashes of being somewhat close to the caliber of a team many thought they would be this season. It’s late in the season and all margin for error is gone. I will again remind you that it didn’t have to be this way. Turning a 4-8 home league record into a measly 6-6 would have the Rebels at 12-12 and us talking about outside hosting chances, as insane as that notion sounds. But this is this team’s reality and this is the work left to be done. I will ask you this: if Ole Miss does get into the NCAA Tournament, would you want to see them in your regional if you were a fan of a team that was hosting? That’s a no for me.
Even beyond this chase for a chance at the field of 64, the same uncertainty about the program’s future looms. An NCAA Tournament birth isn’t going to save Mike Bianco’s job. But an NCAA Tournament birth will at least give an underachieving team with a good bit of talent a chance to rectify its regular season mistakes and achieve a result sufficient enough to retain Bianco. As lofty and as far-fetched as it may be, having an opportunity is a more noble way to go out than fading quietly.
Ole Miss Hoops lands Theo Akwuba
Kermit Davis snagged his first major portal land of the offseason with ULL transfer Theo Akwuba. The 6-foot-11 forward averaged 9.1 points and 7.9 rebounds in 25 games for the Ragin Cajuns last year. Akwuba picked Ole Miss over Iowa and drew interest from NC State, Penn State, and South Carolina. He fits the profile of a front-court player Davis loves to have in his system. Akwuba will add a rim-protection and shot-blocking presence to a team that didn’t have that luxury at times last year when Nysier Brooks was off the floor and with Robert Allen out for most all of the season with an injury. It’s likely not a coincidence this happened on the heels of Davis hiring ULL assistant Brock Morris to his staff last week.
If you believe in such things, 247 Sports has Ole Miss with the 22nd best recruiting class in the country. Rivals has the Rebels ranked 29th. That, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt. As we have discussed many times in this space, Davis and his staff must reshape this roster via the transfer portal. Taking three high school players last year proved to be a bad decision when injuries hit during the season. Well, this year Ole Miss is set to take four. It has landed Akwuba and Jackson State’s Jayveous McKinnis in the transfer portal and has a commitment from Loyola (New Orleans, NAIA) transfer Myles Burns.
In a bizarre press release that published a few days after the season ended, Davis proclaimed that he and his staff would hit the transfer portal harder than any team in the country this offseason. Since then, two of his assistants have left and this has been his portal haul. While it’s hardly a ceiling-changing class so far, Akwuba is a real player that will help Ole Miss next year. How Davis manages to fill the other holes on this roster with only a couple spots available and limited options to realistic pick from, I suppose this is a step in the right direction.
On the horizon
I have been behind with this newsletter due to some other side projects, but we will have thoughts on Arch Manning, NIL and more in a newsletter later this week
A cool baseball podcast idea with Chase Parham and Collin Brister. It’s different than what you might think.
Mailbag Friday pod.
That is 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.