It’s been 3,260 days since the Ole Miss baseball team won a series over bitter rival Mississippi State with Mike Bianco’s squad looking to change that this weekend in Oxford.
The Rebels (18-15, 3-9 SEC) are currently on a seven-game losing streak and desperately need conference wins if they want to keep their postseason chances alive. Bianco, during an appearance on SportsTalk Mississippi, revealed what his message was to the team as they prepare for a pivotal series against the Bulldogs (21-12, 6-6 SEC).
“There’s 18 (conference) games left. There’s six series’ left,” Bianco recounted from Monday’s team meeting. “If you win a weekend, if you win a game, it can all change very quickly. But you’ve got to stick together, you’ve got to continue to fight, but you’ve got to play better. If you believe you’re good enough, it only takes a game or two, and next thing you know, you’re playing a little bit better, and you win a weekend and then another weekend.
“The tough thing about the Southeastern Conference is if you don’t play well, you lose. The good news is everybody beats everybody in our league. So, if you can fight and continue to stay in it and keep your head above water and start to win some weekends, you can be right back in it.”
While Kendall Rogers, managing editor of D1Baseball, did not say this weekend is a must-win series for Ole Miss, he believes it’s vital to the Rebels’ path to the postseason. Typically, an SEC team needs at least 13 conference wins to make a regional, which would mean Ole Miss needs to win over half of its remaining games.
“This is one of those weekends that if you’re Ole Miss – and I’m not sure they’ll ever completely turn it around because of some of the pieces they’ve lost on the mound – you’re looking for a weekend to kind of change the narrative,” Rogers said, noting season-ending injuries to Hunter Elliott and Xavier Rivas. J.T. Quinn has also missed significant time with a strained oblique. “At 3-9, they need to boogie a little bit. You’re looking at the remaining schedule and you’re going, ‘OK, how do they get to 13 wins?’ It’s a tough pathway, but hope isn’t lost yet.”
If Ole Miss misses the postseason this year, they will join Mississippi State as the only two programs this century to miss it twice in a row after winning the national championship. The in-state foes will begin this weekend’s series on Friday at 7 p.m. CT at Swayze Field. All three games can be listened to on participating SuperTalk Mississippi stations across the state.
Caleb Salers contributed to this report.
