Storybook ending: Ole Miss baseball completes Omaha dream, wins first national title

Jun. 27—OMAHA — A week or so ago, Ole Miss senior Justin Bench insisted the Rebels weren't Cinderella. This was a team that knew it belonged, that was supposed to be in Omaha all along, even when things were bad, he said. This team was meant for great things, 7-14 SEC start or not.

Regardless of what the Rebels knew they were capable of, they had moments where they looked like they might not make it to the postseason at all.

Four-straight SEC weekend losses — many in excruciating fashion — were brutal. The big hits weren't coming, and the big pitches weren't fooling anyone. But Bench and his teammates stayed optimistic.

The Rebels were one of the last teams selected into the NCAA Tournament, and on Memorial Day — the day of the selection show — players said they were happy they had a chance.

It's been about a month since that fateful Monday, when Ole Miss learned it still had all of its goals in front of it. And on a perfect Sunday at Charles Schwab Field, this year's sort of-Cinderella finally put on her glass slipper.

Behind a stellar start from freshman Hunter Elliott, the superstar freshman from Tupelo who has remained calm, cool and collected through all the ups and downs of a 2022 season that had its share of them, and a clutch offensive eighth-inning for the history books, Ole Miss (42-23) defeated Oklahoma 4-2 in the clinching game of the College World Series final.

Ole Miss swept the Sooners (45-24) in two games.

The Rebels finish the postseason 10-1, having outscored teams 82-25. It is the first national championship for Ole Miss in program history. Trailing 2-1 in the eighth, Ole Miss scored three runs to surge ahead, allowing senior closer Brandon Johnson to put the finishing touches on history.

It is the first national title for head coach Mike Bianco, who has been at the helm of the Rebels for 22 years. It's also the second year in a row the championship trophy comes back to the Magnolia State, as Mississippi State won its first national title in 2021.

"There's so much to be said about how much we overcame this year, how much we had to fight through, how much we had to pick each other up and never let ourselves get too down. This story of our season is going to be told for years and years and years to come," senior first baseman Tim Elko said. "This is the best Ole Miss baseball team in history, and it feels so good, and it's an honor to be a part of it."

Junior pitcher Dylan DeLucia — a junior college transfer who didn't even factor into the rotation's plans when the season started — was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player after winning both of his College World Series starts. Elko, Bench, sophomore rightfielder Calvin Harris, senior leftfielder Kevin Graham, sophomore designated hitter Kemp Alderman and DeLucia were named to the all-tournament team.

Not too shabby for a group that, for a few weeks, didn't know if it was going to get an invitation to the Big Dance at all after falling to Vanderbilt in the first round of the SEC Tournament.

"Everything hasn't kind of kicked in yet," DeLucia said. "I'm just really excited, really happy for this ball club. ... This is just a dream come true for me. I never thought I would be in this situation coming out of high school. It's just truly a blessing to be here with this team."

The hard hit balls that weren't finding green grass in series against South Carolina and Mississippi State started finding holes late in the season, particularly in big moments: Ole Miss had 15 two-out RBIs in six College World Series games.

And as opposed to earlier in the season when the Rebels couldn't escape the crooked, backbreaking inning on the mound, Ole Miss found ways to destroy all hope of opposing comebacks this postseason, best exemplified by freshman Mason Nichols inheriting a bases loaded jam with no outs in the championship series opener and holding the mighty Sooners to just a single run.

Winning championships takes the entire team, junior catcher Hayden Dunhurst said during an off-day practice at nearby Creighton. The key to the postseason, head coach Mike Bianco said at another point in the postseason, was your stars being stars, but, just as crucial, was getting contributions from less-heralded players.

And whether it was an incredible College World Series start for sophomore pitcher Jack Dougherty on Saturday — his first start in three months, no less — big hits from a third baseman in Garrett Wood who didn't start a game until the super regionals, sophomore centerfielder T.J. McCants fighting injuries and season-long inconsistency to come through with key home runs in the postseason, or a usual catcher in sophomore Calvin Harris playing right field and delivering huge hit after huge hit, Ole Miss' role players came through when the moment beckoned.

"To win at the end of the season, your stars have to show up. They've got to perform on a stage, and certainly our guys have. But to win and to move on, you need the guys that maybe nobody was expecting. On media day they weren't the guys that were in all the photo shoots and all of that," Bianco said. "Again, they don't have to be the MVP of the tournament. Sometimes they are, but you've got to have different pieces or different ones on different nights. ... That's how you get here, because it takes all of them. You just can't — you've got to lean on your stars, but man, you need the other parts to come through for you."

And when stars were struggling — sophomore shortstop Jacob Gonzalez was 0 for his last 12 in the previous three games before Sunday — they came through when the Rebels' lives depended on it. Gonzalez scorched a majestic 393-foot solo home run to break a scoreless tie in the sixth inning of Sunday's game. He then tied the game in the bottom of the eighth, setting the stage for a pair of wild pitches that put the Rebels ahead for good.

"I knew if we could just get a couple base runners, a couple good at-bats, this crowd was going to get into it. We knew we could feed off that. We couldn't have a better guy up when Jacob got that hit," junior second baseman Peyton Chatagnier said. "It was just amazing."

Things weren't always easy for the 2022 Ole Miss Rebels. The story has been documented ad nauseam: they started off the year in the top-five, rose to No. 1 in the polls, then struggled mightily — Ole Miss lost 11 of 16 games from April 5 to May 1 — but righted the ship late in the season to punch their postseason tickets.

The Rebels' faith never wavered, their confidence never dropped and, at the end of the day, they knew they had the pieces to shock the outside world.

Consider the mission accomplished.

"If you continue to work hard, you continue to push and you continue to believe, as Tim (Elko) said, you can accomplish anything. That's not some poster or some tweet to motivate you. We've all heard that. These guys have lived that this season. They really have," Bianco said. "They've fallen down, where not a lot of people believed that they were any good anymore, and a lot of people may have been disappointed in them. And I get that. It's sports, and that's part of it.

But they didn't let that affect them. They continued to believe in one another. They continued to push. ... I think people have fallen in love with them, their story and where they come from. They had a lot of people rooting for them, and not just Ole Miss fans.

"I've gotten so many texts over the last couple weeks from a lot of our rivals, a lot of the people that we compete against every single day, that says they're pulling for us, that they've fallen in love with this story and these guys. As I said at the very beginning, (I'm) very fortunate to have been a part of it and let those guys allow me to be on the ride with them."

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