Ole Miss pitcher Owen Kelly reacts to a play during an 11-1 win against Alcorn State at Swayze Field. | Dylan Cohron, HottyToddy.com Images
Ole Miss pitcher Owen Kelly reacts to a play during an 11-1 win against Alcorn State at Swayze Field. | Dylan Cohron, HottyToddy.com Images

Ole Miss Checked the Only Box That Mattered Ahead of LSU

BY Taylor Hodges

Ole Miss didn’t need style points Tuesday night. It just needed to handle its business, get off the field early, and move on to the weekend.

An 11-1 run-rule win over Alcorn State at Swayze Field checked that box.

That’s really what this one was about. The Rebels were supposed to win, and supposed to win comfortably. They did both.

Grayson Gibson set the tone with two clean innings, striking out four and giving Ole Miss exactly what you want from a midweek starter. No drama, no traffic, no reason to stretch him.

From there, the bullpen pieced together the rest without much stress. Leo Odom picked up the win, and the group as a whole kept Alcorn State from ever building anything that resembled momentum.

The offense did its part early. A base-clearing double from Dom Decker in the second inning opened things up, and Judd Utermark followed with a double of his own to make it 4-0.

By the time Ole Miss added runs in the third, fourth, and fifth, the only real question left was how quickly the Rebels could get to the finish line. Three bases-loaded walks in the seventh sealed the run-rule and wrapped up the night.

So yes, box checked. Ole Miss is now 23-11, and nothing about Tuesday’s game will show up on a postseason résumé or shift the national conversation. It wasn’t supposed to.

What matters is whether it helped.

The Rebels host No. 24 LSU this weekend, and that’s the series that will say a lot more about who they are and where they’re headed.

Confidence can be a fragile thing, especially after the kind of up-and-down stretches Ole Miss has lived through this season.

A clean, no-nonsense win doesn’t fix everything, but it doesn’t hurt either. The Rebels would certainly rather be on the winning side, instead of the losing side. That’s where LSU is after losing 10-7 to Bethune-Cookman on Tuesday night.

The question now is whether it was enough of a tune-up before the stakes jump again on Friday night.

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