Without question, last weekend’s loss in the regional tournament was a huge letdown for the Ole Miss baseball team. The Rebels were hosting a double elimination tournament, and were favored to win and move onto a super regional tournament in Miami, but ultimately lost to Utah and Tulane.
“It’s hard to talk after that,” Bianco said after the loss to Tulane that eliminated the Rebels from postseason play. “I just told the kids that that’s why it is the greatest game on earth. You have the thrill of victory and it will just rip your heart out. As we sit here, I just feel awful for my guys.”
“That’s why baseball is a special game, and sometimes it just doesn’t work,” Bianco said. “We played two errorless games. Maybe we could have gotten a couple base hits. But you have to credit the pitchers the last two days. Again, it unfortunately just didn’t work.”
Bianco was proud of the effort the team gave in its final games of the season.
“As I told the guys, in other regional losses, you can look back and say we didn’t play well, or we came out flat. But you look at these last two games and our guys played their hearts out,” Bianco said
As disappointing as the early exit was, the Rebels still defied preseason expectations. The team was ranked 10th or 11th in the last regular season top-25 rankings by each of the top three polls, much higher than any of the polls had them in the preseason, and were fifth in the nation in RPI.
“I’m just so proud of this team,” Bianco said. “I don’t think many expected us to be playing in June in Oxford, but those guys in the third base dugout sure did.”
In a season which, based on the last regular season polls, seven of the top 10 teams in the nation were from the Southeastern Conference, the Rebels went an impressive 18-12 in conference play, had series wins against LSU and Arkansas and SEC tournament victories against Georgia, South Carolina and Vanderbilt as well as an out-of-conference series win against Louisville.
The Rebels will have some work to put in if they hope to go further in the postseason next year. In addition to the departures of seniors Cameron Dishon, Connor Cloyd, Matt Denny and Holt Perzdock, there are also several players who could be selected in the MLB draft and leave school early.
Ole Miss will have to replace a lot of key contributors next year, but they have a highly touted recruiting class that could make the transition a lot easier. The 2016 class was ranked number nine in the country by Perfect Game, with five of the Rebel signees ranked in Perfect Game’s top 100 players. While there’s a chance some of the members of the class could also be selected in the MLB draft and choose to sign with a MLB team, there will still be a lot of new talent joining Ole Miss for the 2017 season.
