'Just wait:' How Tupelo's Hunter Elliott delivered Ole Miss baseball's national championship

OMAHA, Neb. — Hunter Elliott lived up to the smack talk.

The Ole Miss baseball freshman put up unbelievable numbers in the NCAA Tournament this June, posting a 1.42 ERA with 28 strikeouts against 24 combined hits and walks. The Rebels were 4-0 when the left-hander threw this postseason, including the decisive win over Southern Miss that sent Ole Miss to the College World Series and the win over Oklahoma that clinched the Rebels' first championship.

Elliott, a Tupelo native, was committed to Ole Miss since he was a freshman in high school. He always wanted to pitch in a Rebels jersey in situations like those. And as his dad Wally joked, the family always knew he could be a transformative presence in Oxford.

"We joked around with some friends of our from Mississippi State," Wally Elliott told the Clarion Ledger. "They said, 'Y'all have never won one.' I said 'Well, Hunter ain't there yet. Just wait.'"

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Along with junior right-hander Dylan DeLucia, Elliott was one of the steadying presences in the Ole Miss rotation that saved the Rebels' season.

Elliott moved into the rotation full-time in April against Mississippi State. He made nine starts from that weekend on, owning a 2.38 ERA. The Rebels were 7-2 in those nine starts; in the two losses Elliott only allowed four earned runs in 10 innings.

In the wins, Elliott looked like a future first-round pick. He mixed his fastball, slider, changeup and curveball well, relying on different sequences every game to keep hitters off-balance. He out-dueled All-America starters Carson Palmquist and Tanner Hall in the Coral Gables Regional and Hattiesburg Super Regional, respectively, and held step-for-step against Oklahoma freshman phenom Cade Horton, one of the hottest pitchers on the planet, in the College World Series finals.

This shouldn't have been much of a surprise. First off, Elliott was just as hot as Horton. Secondly, June 26 was an anniversary for the Ole Miss freshman.

"We had a lady post on Facebook that 11 years ago today he pitched in a 9-year-old tournament and he threw a no-hitter and they won the state championship," Wally Elliott said after Sunday's game. "He's just been composed since then. He really has."

Elliott's composure through the whole season — particularly the postseason run — was the stuff of a budding legend. He loaded the bases with one out in the first inning against Miami in the regional and struck out the next two hitters he faced to end the threat. He put a runner on third base in the second inning against Southern Miss then not only stranded him but responded by retiring the next 16 batters he faced.

Then there was the Oklahoma game. The Sooners put runners on first and third with one out. It looked like they got to Elliott with a sacrifice bunt leading to an errant Elliott throw, scoring a run, but a replay review gave Ole Miss a reprieve and called Oklahoma's sacrifice bunter out for interference down the first-base line. One pitch after the lengthy review, Elliott forced All-America shortstop Peyton Graham to fly out to right field, keeping the game scoreless.

Those are the types of pitches Elliott made time and time and time again down the stretch. Those are the types of plays Ole Miss needed to win its championship. And they're the moments Elliott's family will always treasure.

"Baseball has been our whole life since our kids were born," said Misty Elliott, Hunter's mother. "My husband played college baseball (at Central Arkansas). That's just been our whole life. It's meant more than anything else. Probably more tears have been shed today than will be at weddings."

Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: How Hunter Elliott delivered Ole Miss baseball's first championship