Another weekend brings another ranked opponent for Ole Miss baseball as it dives into its treacherous non-conference slate. The Rebels will welcome the 24th-ranked North Carolina-Wilmington Seahawks to town for a three-game set at Swayze Field. Here are five things you should know about them:
- The Seahawks return seven of nine starters from a team that won 41 games and made some noise at the Columbia, South Carolina regional. The Seahawks went 2-0 and made the championship game of the regional but fell twice in a row to South Carolina and were eliminated.
- This team can hit the baseball. It ranked eighth nationally with a .320 team batting average in 2016 and averaged over eight runs per contest. It returns the heart of its order in catcher Nick Feight, first baseman Zack Canada, second baseman Brian Mims and junior left fielder Daniel Stack. Three of the four are juniors, with Stack being a senior. The Seahawks had eight guys in their order hit at least 10 home runs a year ago.
- Catcher Nick Feight is really, really good. The slugger hit 21 home runs and drove in 91 runs a season ago while hitting .349 and slugging a remarkable .726. He’s the anchor of this team.
- The Seahawks lost their ace from last year’s team in Ryan Foster who went 13-2. Alex Royalty went 8-2 last year and will be UNC-Wilmington’s ace. He’s a tall righty who has a four-pitch arsenal beginning with a 90-92 mph fastball that he complements with a really good breaking ball, along with a changeup and a splitter. Their rotation features three right-handers, and the level of stuff drops a little bit after Royalty, but the Seahawks score plenty of runs to combat that.
- This team has a deep bullpen it can dig deeply into with about 12 or 13 arms ready to go at any moment. UNC-Wilmington lost its closer Jared Gesell, but it’s added some depth and will arguably be deeper than last year’s regional team in this department.
This is an intriguing series for Ole Miss. It just came off of a huge sweep of a top-10 team and is riding high, but UNC-Wilmington is a veteran group with five seniors and seven returning starters. The Seahawks starting pitching doesn’t have a ton of experience, and there will likely be a lot of offense in this series due in part to the number of good young hitters Ole Miss has and partly because UNC-Wilmington has one of the most explosive offenses in college baseball. It will be interesting to see how all three Rebel starters fare, particularly James McArthur and Brady Feigl because they didn’t have quite as strong of an outing as David Parkinson did last Friday night.
Prediction:
This will be another really good test for this Ole Miss team, and perhaps a more challenging one in some ways. There isn’t as much buzz about the Seahawks coming to town as there was with a top-10 team like East Carolina on opening weekend. But UNC-Wilmington will come ready to play. It has a veteran lineup and one of the best coaches in college baseball in Mark Scalf, who has won more than 800 games in his 25 seasons with the program. This team doesn’t have as many NCAA Tournament résumé-building chances as Ole Miss does and will come in hungry and ready to play with a prime opportunity in front of it.
If Ole Miss’ bats can stay hot – namely Will Golsan, Thomas Dillard, Ryan Olenek and Cole Zabowski – I think they have the upper hand on the mound in terms of starting pitching and the bullpen. Offense will be plentiful in this series, and I think the Rebels will take two of three this weekend.
