The coaching carousel has already hit Mississippi with Southern Miss announcing Christian Ostrander as the team’s new head coach and Mississippi Valley State deciding to part ways with Milton Barney.
So, that brings us to the question: are any other Mississippi coaches in danger of losing their jobs this offseason? While fans of Mississippi State and Ole Miss are definitely not pleased with their teams missing the postseason in the same year for the first time since 2002, the short answer is a no – at least for those two schools.
Here’s what Mississippi State’s Chris Lemonis and Ole Miss’ Mike Bianco are saying about their disappointing seasons.
Chris Lemonis
This is the second year in a row that the Bulldogs have missed the NCAA Tournament after winning it all in 2021, leaving new athletics director Zac Selmon with a lot to think about in terms of the future of the school’s baseball program.
While Lemonis has not been fully assured about the status of his job, the third-year coach feels confident that he’ll be back next season.
“I’m sure we’ll have that meeting,” Lemonis said. “Hasn’t been a full assurance, but I’m confident he’s confident in us. We know how to coach. We have an area to fix and we have to get it right, but I’m confident we’ll get it going.”
As for the broken area to which Lemonis is referring, his team’s pitching staff had an SEC-worst earned run average of 7.01 this season, leading to the firing of pitching coach Scott Foxhall.
“I’ve got to do a great job at hiring a pitching coach here. That’s obviously a big place of need. For the past two years, we just haven’t pitched well,” Lemonis continued. “We’ve had injuries, but we can still pitch better. We just haven’t pitched well enough.”
Mike Bianco
Coming off of the first national championship in program history, the Rebels’ season experienced ebbs and more ebbs. Ole Miss began the 2023 campaign ranked No. 4 overall, but quickly fell out of the top 25 and only mustered one series win in conference play.
Ole Miss capped off the honeymoon season on the wrong side of the broom in Tuscaloosa, resulting in the Rebels landing in the basement of the conference standings.
After the conclusion of the Rebels’ series at Alabama, head coach Mike Bianco, who is not currently on the hot seat, acknowledged that he and his staff have a lot of work to do to regain the trust of Ole Miss fans.
“Just disappointing. It’s easy to look back at some injuries and surely that was cause for a lot, but there are other things. Things we have to look back at and fix and we will fix. We’ll hit the ground running recruiting as early as tomorrow and fix this. It’s disappointing, and for that, we’re all very sorry.”
