Back in late March, Mississippi State came into Swayze Field and took all three games of the series from Ole Miss.
Then in late April, the Bulldogs made it four straight with a 7-3 win in the Governor’s Cup at Trustmark Park in Pearl.
Four meetings in 2026, four losses for the Rebs and it had more than a few people in Mississippi wondering whether Mike Bianco’s team has what it takes to make a postseason run.
Fast forward to this weekend, and it’s Ole Miss heading to Omaha while Mississippi State is watching from home.
That’s what fans love about college baseball’s postseason, and few programs understand that better than the Rebels.
On Saturday in Auburn, the Rebs pulled off something that didn’t look easy from the outside. Ole Miss beat No. 4 Auburn 5-3 at Plainsman Park to complete a two-game sweep of the super regional, punching their ticket to the 2026 College World Series in Omaha.
It’s the program’s seventh CWS appearance and first since winning it all in 2022.
Meanwhile, Mississippi State, the team that had owned this rivalry all spring. got swept right out of the postseason by No. 3 Georgia in Athens.
The two teams combined for 45 runs and 21 home runs across the series, but it wasn’t enough for State.
Georgia closed it out in extra innings Sunday, with a two-run homer in the bottom of the 10th sending the Dawgs to Omaha and Mississippi State home.
Rabe carries the load again
None of this happens without Taylor Rabe doing what he’s been doing all postseason.
The right-hander took the ball in Game 2 with the series on the line and delivered again, striking out eight Auburn hitters over seven innings, allowing just six hits and two earned runs on 104 pitches and retiring eight of the last nine batters he faced heading into the eighth inning.
Rabe leads the SEC and ranks third in the NCAA in strikeout-to-walk ratio, punching out 9.00 batters for every walk issued with just 10 walks on the season.
He’s been the kind of starter Bianco has needed when the margin for error disappears. Rabe makes it less complicated managing a pitching staff.
The offense wasn’t explosive as Ole Miss collected just five hits in Game 2 but the Rebels made the moments count.
Judd Utermark drew a walk in the eighth, and Will Furniss hit his eighth home run of the season to put Ole Miss ahead 4-2, with Tristan Bissetta following on the very next pitch with his 23rd homer of the year. Back-to-back in the eighth, just like that, and the game was effectively over.
Walker Hooks entered in the ninth, found some trouble, and a sacrifice fly made it a 5-3 game but he got the final outs to preserve the win and send the Rebs to Omaha.
It’s the third time Bianco has guided Ole Miss to the College World Series, tying the legendary Tom Swayze for the most CWS trips by a head coach in program history.
For a program that’s spent decades trying to build something sustainable, that’s a number worth noting.
Nobody saw this coming in May
Let’s put the spring into some context.
Mississippi State came to Oxford in late March and won the opener 5-4, took the second game 6-1 and completed the sweep before adding the Governor’s Cup victory in Pearl to finish off a clean 4-0 run against the Rebs in 2026.
After dropping that second game of the March series, Ole Miss fell to 19-9 and 3-5 in SEC play.
The Rebels weren’t just losing to their in-state rival, they were in a broader slump that had people questioning the direction of the program.
By the end of the regular season, Ole Miss had lost its third SEC series in four weekends and slipped to the No. 9 seed in the SEC Tournament.
That’s not the profile of a team people expect to see in Omaha. But they have a habit of finding its footing late, and what happened after that rough stretch is the whole point of this column.
The Rebels had also watched Murray State dogpile at Swayze Field to eliminate them from the NCAA Tournament last season, a moment senior Will Furniss said haunted him all offseason.
It probably sharpened everybody’s and what we’re all seeing could prove that.
Ole Miss knows how to do this
Ole Miss went on the road for the super regional and swept Auburn, the No. 4 national seed, 6-4 and 5-3.
It was a tough path to this year’s College World Series and the program’s first trip back to Omaha since winning the national title in 2022.
That championship run is worth revisiting because the blueprint looks familiar.
In 2022, the Rebels went from the last team selected for the field of 64 to national champions, going 6-1 in Omaha and beating Oklahoma in the final series to claim the title.
Nobody thought to think of that happening back then. Bianco has now built a program that’s difficult to count out once the calendar turns to June, no matter how the regular season went.
Ole Miss opens the College World Series, which runs June 12-22, against the winner of the Chapel Hill Super Regional between USC and North Carolina.
So while Mississippi State fans spend the next week replaying that 10th-inning homer in Athens, the Rebels will be unpacking in Omaha.
Four losses to the Bulldogs during the regular season. A shaky conference record heading into May. Now a tournament run very few predicted.
That’s college baseball. And right now in Mississippi, only one program’s still playing it.
