Ole Miss senior Kennedy Bunker swings for a hit against Southern Miss in a midweek game in Oxford. | Ole Miss Athletics
Ole Miss senior Kennedy Bunker swings for a hit against Southern Miss in a midweek game in Oxford. | Ole Miss Athletics

Southern Miss Tried Everything Against Madi George and It Didn’t Work

BY Taylor Hodges

Some nights the bats show up early, stay late, and make the whole thing feel simple. That was Ole Miss on Tuesday.

The Rebels didn’t just beat Southern Miss 12-5. They hit their way through the evening with the confidence of a lineup that was in sync the entire night.

Four home runs, 11 hits, 12 runs. That’s not a fluke. That’s a group that’s heating up at the right time.

And at the center of it again was Madi George, who is now firmly in the category of hitters opponents would prefer not to deal with.

Southern Miss tried both approaches. They pitched to her, and she doubled. They hit her, and she homered. They intentionally walked her, and she homered anyway the next time up. She finished 3-for-3 with two home runs, a double, and that intentional walk that felt more like a surrender flag than a strategy.

The night didn’t start smoothly. Southern Miss punched first with two runs in the opening inning, but Ole Miss answered with the kind of inning that makes a pitching staff rethink its life choices.

Five straight hits, six straight reaching, and suddenly the Rebels were up 5-2. Persy Llamas tied it with an RBI single, George doubled home another, and Cassie Reasner blew the inning open with a three-run shot.

George kept the pressure on in the second with a two-run homer, and Laylonna Applin joined the fun in the third with a solo shot of her own.

Even when Southern Miss clawed back three runs in the fourth, the Rebels didn’t blink. George stepped up again in the bottom half and launched her second homer of the night to push it to 9-5.

From there, the offense kept rolling. Reasner added an RBI double after the intentional walk to George, Rachel Connors lifted a sacrifice fly, and an error tacked on one more. It wasn’t quite a run rule, but it was close enough that the final innings felt like a formality.

On the other side, Lilly Whitten gave Ole Miss exactly what it needed. She settled the game with 3.1 innings of one-hit relief and three strikeouts, letting the offense keep stretching the lead without worrying about what was happening behind them.

This wasn’t a night about tension or drama. It was about a lineup that’s starting to look dangerous again, with George leading the charge and everyone else following right behind her.

Ole Miss heads back into SEC play this weekend at Auburn, and if the bats travel, the Rebels will give themselves a chance in every game. The swings are loud right now, and that’s a good place to be in late April.

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