Nobody said it was going to be pretty. And it wasn’t.
Ole Miss is still playing, though, and that’s what matters when the calendar turns to June and the bracket demands results over how anything looks.
The Rebels knocked off host Nebraska 6-3 in the Lincoln Regional, a game that started Saturday night before lightning pushed the final inning to Sunday morning.
When the dust settled and the weather cleared, Ole Miss (38-21) punched its ticket to the regional championship game at 7 p.m. Sunday.
It was only the second home loss of the season for the Huskers (43-16), and it came against a team that had plenty of critics wondering whether this Rebels team had what it takes to survive a road regional.
The short answer is they do. At least through two games.
For stretches on Saturday, this one looked like it might go sideways fast. Ole Miss couldn’t get a runner past first base through five full innings against Nebraska starter Ty Horn.
The offense was quiet, the lineup was pressing and the Huskers had their crowd into it. That’s not a recipe for success when you’re on the road in someone else’s ballpark.
But baseball has a funny way of shifting in a single at-bat, and that’s exactly what happened in the sixth inning.
Hayden Federico singled, and from that moment forward the Rebs rode a wave of full-count execution that flipped the scoreboard and the momentum in one remarkable stretch.
Nine straight Ole Miss wins on full counts at the plate and on the mound defined the game’s decisive passage.
After Federico worked his way from an 0-2 hole into a walk, Owen Paino stepped in and delivered a two-run double to put Ole Miss in front.
Austin Fawley then turned another 0-2 count into a walk to extend the inning, and Brayden Randle added a single for yet another insurance run.
What looked like a quiet offensive night turned into a four-run sixth that the Huskers never fully recovered from.
“There are opportunities in the game when you have to cash in,” Rebs coach Mike Bianco said later. “Both teams have those moments where it’s going one way or the other. We did a lot of the things to make that happen.”
That pretty much summarizes the season. The Rebels have had problems with situational hitting all year.
They’ve let games slip away in moments that called for toughness. Those issues are part of why this team is playing in Lincoln instead of hosting in Oxford this weekend.
Give them credit, though, when the bracket put them in a tight spot, they found a way.
Taylor Rabe Delivers When It Counts
The other half of this story belongs to starter Taylor Rabe, who was asked to hold a slim lead in the bottom of the sixth Saturday night with two singles and a hit by pitch loading the bases and exactly zero outs recorded.
That’s a pressure cooker situation for any pitcher, and Bianco and pitching coach Joel Mangrum let him work his way out of it.
Rabe earned that trust. He’d already been piling up strikeouts — nine on the day — while working through 113 pitches and throwing 74 of them for strikes.
What he did in that loaded-bases jam was the kind of thing that separates good pitchers from reliable ones. He battled Jett Buck through three foul balls before punching him out looking on a full-count pitch for the second out.
Then he fell behind Josh Overbeek 3-0, found a strike on the 3-0 pitch and coaxed a ground out after Overbeek fouled off four consecutive offerings. Bases cleared. Inning over. Ballgame still in hand.
Ole Miss then tacked on two runs in the seventh without recording a single hit — just five walks, three of them on full counts.
Paino and Fawley fouled off a combined eight pitches before drawing ball-four RBIs. It wasn’t clean baseball by any stretch, but it was patient and it was productive.
Bullpen Closes Door With a Little Drama
The Rebels’ bullpen made things interesting in the eighth.
JP Robertson struck out a batter on a full count, the eighth straight Ole Miss full-count win of the night, and then surrendered a two-out pinch-hit home run that trimmed the lead to three runs. This Ole Miss team doesn’t make anything easy on its fans.
Robertson finished his night with two innings of relief, four strikeouts and no walks, giving up those two runs on the home run ball.
Paino led off the ninth with yet another full-count walk before officials suspended play due to lightning.
Sunday morning brought the drama-filled conclusion. Landon Waters surrendered two hits to open the ninth before Bianco went to Hudson Calhoun, who’d already thrown 51 pitches in Friday’s win.
Calhoun induced a 5-3 double play and stranded two runners to close it out and earn the save. It wasn’t the smoothest finish, but it got the job done.
Will Furniss went 3-for-5 against the Huskers. Both Decker and Federico chipped in two hits apiece. The Ole Miss defense held Nebraska to a 2-for-10 clip with runners on base and a goose egg — 0-for-3 — with a runner in scoring position.
You can usually survive a sloppy night on offense when you’re that stingy defensively.
This is the 11th time in the Mike Bianco era that Ole Miss has gone 2-0 in a regional, and the Rebs advanced to a super regional on eight of those previous 10 occasions.
It’s also the third time they’ve gone 2-0 in a road regional. They lost two straight games to TCU in the 2012 College Station Regional but beat Arizona in the 2022 Coral Gables Regional final.
Sunday night they’ll face either Nebraska or Arizona State — whoever wins the 2 p.m. game — for the Lincoln Regional championship.
Cade Townsend is expected to take the mound for Ole Miss at first pitch. If a second game is necessary, it’ll go to Monday.
