By Jeff Roberson
The first two baseball games this weekend were close. Game three, not so much.
Save for a nine-run eighth inning by Auburn, Ole Miss played like a team headed in the right direction on a sunny, cloudless, beautiful Sunday for baseball in Oxford.
The Rebels, who won 19-11 and started the Southeastern Conference portion of their season with a sweep, led 14-0 before Auburn pulled close.
Coming off a 13-1 blistering at the hands of Louisiana Tech in the midweek, and that loss coming after an 8-3 setback at the hands of Louisiana-Monroe last Sunday, the Rebels needed a good weekend. They needed to win the series. So they went out and won them all.
Seven Rebel runs in the second inning Sunday chased Tiger starter Trice Bright. Auburn brought in Peyton Glavine, son of former Major Leaguer Tom Glavine, to stop the damage. But in the fourth, three more Rebel runs were Glavine’s.
The Rebels kept scoring until that 14-0 lead looked insurmountable. Ultimately it was, but not before things unraveled a bit.
Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco said it happens in the game of baseball.
“We just needed to get three outs and get off the field,” he said of that nine-run eighth. “Those outs weren’t coming too easily.”
After all was said and done, the Rebels got it done – all weekend.
People are still kind of getting to know this Rebel team. After last season’s super start of 16-1, including 16 wins in a row B.C. – before COVID – Ole Miss fans were expecting things to go like that again, even with a couple of important infield starters gone in Anthony Servideo and Tyler Keenan. There were, and remain, a lot of expectations for this year’s team.
Entering the weekend 13-4, the Rebels clipped the visiting Tigers 1-0 and 6-5 the first two days and put themselves in position for the sweep.
After waiting on some form of normalcy the past 12 months, that’s what it felt like at Oxford-University Stadium/Swayze Field this weekend. Normal. It’s been a long grind for a year to see when we might feel that way again.
Sunday starter Derek Diamond, who got the win, may have said it best.
“Last year we stopped playing right when the SEC season came. It felt really good to get our games in this weekend. Our coaches talked to us about how it was almost a new season,” Diamond said.
“It almost felt like opening weekend again . . . Nothing like standing at the ball field when it’s sunny on a Sunday. Felt great.”
And for Ole Miss, being 3-0 in league play felt great, too, and was the perfect start indeed.
“We just won by eight runs . . . We just swept a team in the Southeastern Conference, and at the end of the day on day three, we won by eight runs,” Bianco said. “We didn’t want to give up 11 (runs) in the last two (innings), and it was a great day for the offense. I’d rather look at it as a positive thing.”
Ole Miss returns to the diamond on Tuesday to host Central Arkansas. The first pitch is set for 6:30 p.m. on SEC Network+.
