No. 20 Ole Miss got its weekend started off as best it could.
The Rebels defeated No. 9 Texas A&M on Friday night and Hunter Elliott reached 300 career strikeouts. All things considered, it was a good night for Ole Miss baseball.
Afterwards, Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco spoke with reporters about Friday night’s game, Elliott’s milestone achievement and other decisions made during the game. Here’s everything he said.
On Hunter Elliott…
I try not to tell him much. I try not to. He does pretty good on his own.
On Elliott’s fastballs, getting ahead in counts…
I thought everything was really good. I thought he did an excellent job against a team that doesn’t chase and really runs the count. A team that walks, and a team that’s really good. When you throw it in there, you usually get good swings off and very productive swings. I just said, Brad, not just in our conference, but one of the best in the country. I thought he was terrific. As you mentioned, a lot of first-pitch strikes, a lot of really good counts. And then when he was in those good counts, he was able to make some good two-strike pitches as well.
On Elliott’s confidence…
Yeah, we don’t doubt that kid. He’s really good. Yes, it’s not always great. It’s not always pretty sometimes. But we’ve had a lot of great ones here, and not many guys answer the bell better than he does.
On emotions of Friday, potentially, being Elliott’s last game at Swayze Field…
Yeah, I think sometimes those emotions can help you or hurt you. You’ll see that throughout the weekend. You never know. I watched him in tears here about 11 months ago, and we thought that was going to be the last time. I don’t ever believe it’s going to be the last time for Hunter Elliott. But with that being said, he’s one of the greats. He’ll go down as one of the greats. I didn’t realize 300 strikeouts, and one of those 11 was 300. That’s a big number in any program at any time. But he’s certainly one of the legendary starters that we’ve ever had.
On decision to bring in Walker Hooks for Hudson Calhoun in 8th inning…
It was 3-2, and you sit there with, what are you going to do? Obviously, you want to have your best guy in the game at the end. He was already getting hot in the seventh when we had some base runners. But when it was 3-2, remember, the double and the base hit happened with two outs. Sometimes you can’t say, “Hey, now we’ve got three,” because some of those levers have already been maneuvered. But even with that, you look at the last six outs, and I know everybody wants to count them and say, “Hey, I wish I could rewind it sometimes and say, how do we do it?” But I don’t think we do that differently. I’m not sure if we win the game if we did it differently, even with the three-run lead. The truth is, at 3-2, we decided we were going to go with Hooks. Then, obviously, with two outs, he’s ready to go into the game. And if he’s ready, it’s hard not to use him.
On Tristan Bissetta’s RBI single in the 7th inning…
It’s tough. He’s a kid that’s had a great year. Certainly, there are a lot of internal expectations. I even said to him during the game, he’s got to stop beating himself up so much. Sometimes that’s hard, even for the guys that are really good. But I’m proud of him. We needed that one. Obviously, that was a big hit for us.
