Four years ago, Ole Miss took the long way to Omaha.
The Rebels sneaked into the NCAA Tournament as the last team in, won a regional on the road and then a super regional away from home before making a run that ended with a national championship.
It wasn’t pretty getting there. It was, however, unforgettable.
History has a funny way of rhyming.
Now the Rebs find themselves in strikingly familiar territory as a 39-21 team that needed a road regional to get back here, now staring down a trip to Auburn-Plainsman Park on Friday night with a College World Series berth on the line.
Game 1 of the 2026 NCAA Auburn Super Regional tips off at 7 p.m. on ESPN2, and no game this season — not a single one since February — probably carries more weight than this one.
It’s simple math, and Mike Bianco knows it.
Winning a best-of-three series requires two victories. The team that takes Game 1 controls its own fate. The team that drops it has to win back-to-back in a hostile environment to get to Omaha.
Bianco’s been here before, and he understands as well as anyone in the country that winning Friday night isn’t everything, but does make everything else manageable.
The Rebels are walking into a matchup against a No. 4 nationally seeded Auburn team that’s 42-20 and is hosting a super regional for the second consecutive season.
Tigers coach Butch Thompson has guided the Tigers to their fifth super regional since 2017, and Auburn’s been to the College World Series twice. They aren’t going to blink under pressure, and that makes neutralizing Friday night even more critical for Ole Miss.
Pitching matchup sets the stage perfectly.
Hunter Elliott, the left-hander who has become one of the most accomplished arms in program history, draws the Game 1 start against Auburn’s Andreas Alvarez (10-3, 3.52 ERA).
Elliott enters at 5-3 with a 5.21 ERA on the season, but the regular season numbers have never told the full story with him.
In three postseasons at Ole Miss, Elliott has allowed just nine earned runs over 42.2 postseason innings and the Rebels have never lost a game he’s started in the NCAA Tournament.
He’s won four of his six postseason starts. Bianco isn’t sending Elliott out Friday because it’s a coin flip. He’s sending him because when the lights get brightest, Elliott has been the most reliable option Ole Miss has had in the biggest moments.
Across the diamond, Auburn’s pitching staff is no soft touch.
The Tigers own a 3.62 team ERA is the best in the SEC and sixth in the country and their strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.75 leads the entire nation.
Alvarez has been their most consistent starter all year.
The Rebels’ offense is capable of putting crooked numbers on the board, but it’s also a lineup that can go quiet in stretches. That makes it more important they don’t fall behind early against a staff that throws strikes at an elite rate.
Ole Miss arrives in Auburn with some serious momentum
Ole Miss didn’t sleepwalk its way into this super regional.
The Rebs swept through the Lincoln Regional at 3-0, beating Arizona State in 14 innings on Friday, handling a suspended Nebraska game and then beating Arizona State again in 10 innings Sunday night to claim the program’s first regional championship since 2022.
The bullpen posted a 2.12 ERA during that stretch, allowing just four earned runs over 17 innings while striking out 15 batters.
Hayden Federico has been the hottest bat in the lineup during the postseason, hitting .474 with four RBI, four runs scored and an OPS of 1.229 through the regional.
Brayden Randle went 5-for-10 with an RBI single in each of the three regional games and is batting .429 in postseason play.
The walk-off sacrifice fly by Dom Decker that punched Ole Miss’ ticket to Auburn is just the latest example of a team that’s found ways to win close games when it matters most.
Decker’s story adds some texture to this weekend. He played for Murray State last postseason when the Racers made a surprising run to the College World Series, hitting .351 in that run through Oxford and Durham.
He’s now wearing an Ole Miss uniform and is 15 games into his second consecutive super regional trip.
Over two postseason runs combined, he’s hitting .340 with 12 RBI and nine walks. Not bad for a guy nobody was talking about in March.
Judd Utermark continues to rewrite the Ole Miss record book.
He hit his 50th career home run against Arizona State in the regional, becoming the first Rebel in program history to reach that mark.
He’s got 21 homers this season, giving him back-to-back 20-homer campaigns, another first in Ole Miss history.
Austin Fawley has caught fire at exactly the right time, having hit nine home runs over the last 17 games after connecting on just four in his first 36 contests.
The Ole Miss pitching staff has quietly assembled one of the best strikeout totals in the country.
The Rebels have 672 strikeouts this season, leading the SEC and ranking fourth nationally behind Oregon State, Arizona State and Wake Forest.
Taylor Rabe, the homegrown arm from Greenville, has been on an absolute tear, striking out 36 batters over his last three starts while going six innings in each outing.
He leads the SEC in strikeout-to-walk ratio at 9.00 and has issued just 10 walks all season.
Walker Hooks finished the regular season leading the SEC in ERA (1.73), WHIP (0.80) and appearances during conference play.
He’s converted six of his last seven save chances and has allowed just five earned runs over his last 14 outings.
If Bianco needs to protect a lead Friday night, Hooks is the guy he’s going to turn to.
Auburn hasn’t made this easy on anyone
It’d be a mistake to overlook how Auburn got here.
The Tigers dropped their regional opener to Milwaukee — not exactly a brand-name program — then went on a run that required five games to advance, including beating Milwaukee twice in a row to close it out.
That will either break a team or makes it tougher. Thompson’s team chose the latter, he hopes. A program that’s been to five super regionals in nine years doesn’t rattle easily.
On the offensive side, Chase Fralick and Ethin Bingaman have combined for 35 home runs this season, with Fralick’s 20 ranking ninth in the SEC.
Chris Rembert leads the offense with a .345 average, and Rembert, Fralick and Eric Guevara each have at least 70 hits and 10 doubles on the year.
This is a lineup that can do damage, and it’s facing a Rebel pitching staff that has dealt with occasional inconsistency, even with the kind of talent they have.
This is the ninth time in Ole Miss history that it’s competed in a super regional, and the first time since 2019 the Rebs have drawn an SEC opponent in this round.
Auburn and Ole Miss didn’t meet once during the regular season, which means there are no film sessions on what each team has seen from the other in 2026.
Both staffs are feeling each other out from scratch. That cuts both ways, but for a team trying to take a series opener on the road, familiarity would’ve been a nice luxury to have.
None of that changes what’s at stake or what Friday’s first pitch means. A trip to Omaha waits for the team that wins two games this weekend.
The Rebels have been here before and know what’s required.
Getting Game 1 doesn’t guarantee anything, but dropping it in Auburn makes the math awfully uncomfortable.
Bianco’s won enough of these to know that too.
