Adversity part of latest Ole Miss season to end in super regional
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Jun. 15—As Ole Miss baseball puts bats and balls away, the story of the 2021 Rebels is not a Cliff Notes read, coach Mike Bianco says.
Ole Miss was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament on Sunday night in a 16-3 loss to No. 5 seed Arizona.
In February, Ole Miss was in unfamiliar territory as the nation's No. 1 team only to find itself in June in the painful familiarity of another super regional Game 3 loss.
Arizona began the weekend ranked fourth in the NCAA in team batting average. The Wildcats pounded Ole Miss pitching with 20 hits on Sunday.
The Rebels climbed within a game of the College World Series on Saturday when junior left-hander Doug Nikhazy controlled the red-hot Wildcats with fastball location and big-breaking curveballs.
It was behind the emotional Nikhazy that Ole Miss had its best offensive game in Tucson — winning 12-3 with 16 hits, their most ever in a super regional game.
There's no connection between the absence of Nikhazy and the Rebels' less productive pitching and hitting in Game 1, a 9-3 loss, and Game 3, freshman shortstop Jacob Gonzalez said.
"We all play the same. We all play as hard as we can to win the game. We always play with the same attitude, the same fire, and we're always trying to win," he said.
Senior right-hander Taylor Broadway was in the unfamiliar position of pitching at the start of Sunday's game instead of the finish where he set a school record with 16 saves in 2021.
Had Bianco held Broadway for his regular role and the Rebels had fallen behind Broadway's impact on the super regional would have been minimized. Bianco chose to avoid that risk.
Broadway wasn't the only Ole Miss pitcher to struggle in the season-ending Game 3.
After Arizona coach Jay Johnson changed his batting order, "The bottom of their lineup was so, so good," Bianco said. "We struggled to get the top of the lineup out, and there were no outs at the bottom of the lineup either."
The end result was the end of the road for an Ole Miss team that won 45 games yet some would say under-achieved.
The Rebels were unable to navigate a tough early stretch in the SEC schedule losing series against upper-echelon SEC teams Florida, Arkansas and Mississippi State in three-straight weekends.
Many SEC games were played without two of the Rebels' best players. First baseman/DH Tim Elko sustained an ACL tear and missed a month of the field then required more time to regain his timing.
The Rebels played the last month without right-hander Gunnar Hoglund, a projected first-round draft pick who when healthy combined with Nikahzy to give the Rebels a more formidable weekend rotation.
Elko and Hoglund were the two most significant names on an injury list that was much longer.
Eventually the Rebels would win half their SEC series — including against Vanderbilt in Oxford in May — and would reach the SEC Tournament semifinals.
The sum total of the parts produced an 18-12 conference regular season, a fifth-place finish, and a home regional for the fourth time in five complete seasons.
"When you look at all the adversity, all the injuries, if you just look at the book covers maybe you say, 'They didn't get there, and that's a shame,'" Bianco said. "If you look at the pages in between and know this team's story it's pretty special."
