'You can't hide from it': Ole Miss baseball plays the waiting game ahead of NCAA selection show

May 28—OXFORD — Monday is bound to be a bit more stressful than it has been in recent years for Ole Miss baseball.

That's when the NCAA Tournament selection show starts at 11 a.m. on ESPN2. After a 3-1 loss in the opening round of the SEC Tournament, the Rebels (32-22) find themselves firmly on the bubble of making a fourth-straight appearance.

Last season, Ole Miss hosted a regional and came one win short of winning the Tucson super regional and earning a berth in the College World Series.

As of Saturday afternoon, Ole Miss has an RPI of 37. D1Baseball has the Rebels as one of the first four teams out, and Baseball America has Ole Miss as a No. 3 seed in the Hattiesburg regional where it would play No. 2 seed UCLA.

At this point, however, whatever happens as far as their postseason is concerned is no longer in the Rebels' hands, as hard as that might be to grapple with. Following the loss to the Commodores, Ole Miss players said they were doing what they could to keep their minds off Monday.

"It is what it is. You can't take their iPhone away from them," Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco said. "You can't hide from it. Just handle it maturely and understand that, we had some control of it tonight, now we don't have any control of it. I told them this is disappointing for a lot of reasons, but one is that we wanted to be here for a few days at least, just to kind of get that feel for tournament baseball."

The bubble and tournament projections are constantly changing as conference tournaments continue and NCAA berths are given to the winners of those tournaments. Ole Miss' best chance to make it in is for the top regular-season teams from each conference to win their respective tournaments so as to prevent teams that wouldn't otherwise be in the NCAA Tournament discussion from getting a conference's automatic bid.

In the meantime, Bianco said the Rebels would use the time between the Vanderbilt loss and Monday's show to rest up and prepare for a potential postseason run.

"You don't want to ever be in this position," Bianco said. "It's an awful taste in your mouth right now, but sometimes, you can take advantage of the break."

MICHAEL KATZ is the Ole Miss athletics reporter for the Daily Journal. Contact him at michael.katz@djournal.com.