This week in Hoover might mean everything or nothing at all for the Ole Miss baseball program
The Southeastern Conference Baseball Tournament begins on Tuesday at the Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in Hoover, Alabama and Ole Miss is among the eight teams playing in the first round.
A do-or-die first round where the format starts with single elimination and then shifts to double elimination Wednesday to Friday before shifting back to single elimination for Saturday and Sunday’s semifinals and championship rounds.
All of this is known by everyone reading this, but the point is Ole Miss is entering as the final team in the field at the No. 12 Seed, playing in-state rival and No. 5 Seed Mississippi State in the final game of the day on Tuesday (8 p.m. CT first pitch, tentatively). The Rebels could go from having no more extra lives to a couple.
A win over the Bulldogs Tuesday night would be the 12th SEC win of the season for the Rebels and provide them an extended stay in Hoover through at least Friday. Two more wins on Wednesday and Thursday sends them straight to Saturday’s semifinals with a day of light practice and rest on Friday.
Why is any of this important? Well the postseason chances for Ole Miss evaporated in Baton Rouge this past weekend, well 99 percent of them anyway. LSU swept the Rebels in a series that was must win, but everything that did not need to go wrong did and now Hoover provides the only lifeline.
The one percent that is still there is Ole Miss shake out of its Jekyll and Hyde state and somehow put together three wins, the first needing to be against the Bulldogs and No. 4 Seed Texas A&M on Wednesday if the Rebels can advance.
Two teams that Ole Miss found success against in yet another bleak SEC season this Spring.
Maybe this is all too positive for some, but that is the path to a NCAA Tournament at-large selection. Get through two teams you beat and see what comes on Thursday. A win Thursday would give Ole Miss 14 SEC wins.
Getting to Saturday is the only way to keep playing past this week and it is a consensus opinion by local and national media.
The other train of thought by some that Ole Miss just needs to end the season as soon as possible and focus on the bigger question.
What will become of Mike Bianco and his storied tenure in Oxford?
A second losing SEC record and a losing overall record in the first two years after winning the program’s first national championship in story book fashion has Rebel Nation restless.
The conversation between Bianco and Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter will come at the season’s conclusion. Carter has made that clear to The Ole Miss Spirit previously this season.
Next season would be year 25 for Bianco in Oxford but there is the sense of a desire, or need, for a change and fresh start. The results of the last two seasons have compounded that feeling.
So, a quick stay in Hoover would surely facilitate a very tough and hard conversation between Bianco and Carter. But how that ends is anyone’s guess as of now.
If Ole Miss manages to shrug off how it played in its final four games of the regular season and play like it did in the first two against the Aggies? This week could dictate a much different conversation come season’s end.
The SEC Tournament is always a major week for teams, but for Ole Miss it could be the tipping point in a shift in direction for the program.
The post This week in Hoover might mean everything or nothing at all for the Ole Miss baseball program appeared first on On3.
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