Baseball is a game of streaks, and Bianco’s Rebels are on a red-hot one
By Rick Cleveland | Originally published by Mississippi Today
PEARL — Ole Miss baseball coach Mike Bianco stood off to the side as his team posed for photos with the winners’ trophy vase from Tuesday night’s C Spire College Showdown at Trustmark Park, their reward for a 10-3 victory over nationally ranked in-state rival Southern Miss.
“What’s the trophy for?” someone asked Bianco.
“I don’t know,” he answered with a laugh. “I’ve lost lost too many of these to know.”
You should know Bianco’s teams have mostly won. And won. And won. In fact, Tuesday night’s victory was the 976th in his 26th season at Ole Miss. Playing in by far the nation’s best college baseball league, Bianco’s teams have won 63% of their games, a highly impressive baseball win percentage in any league, much less the SEC.
The Rebels, 27-11 on the season, have won six straight, five over ranked teams. They surely seem headed for a 20th NCAA Tournament under Bianco’s leadership. A model of consistency, Bianco has won more than twice as many games as any Ole Miss baseball coach in history of the program.
His current Rebels, featuring excellent pitching and explosive power, have won eight of nine games since being swept by Mississippi State the last weekend of March.
“You guys are on a real heater right now,” a friend told Bianco.
Bianco smiled and replied, “I’ve been around this game and coached too long to do anything other than concentrate on one game at a time. In our conference, you can get humbled really quickly.”
“Humbled” is the right word for what happened to Ole Miss in Oxford March 27-29. State, red-hot at the time, won 5-4 on Friday, 6-1 on Saturday and 7-1 on Sunday.
“I know it sounds like coachspeak, but that was a kick in the gut,” Bianco said. “We didn’t play very well against a really good team and they beat us up at our place. You gotta handle it and pick yourself back up.”
The Rebels have done that. Boy, have they done that. In the two weekends since, they won two of three at Florida and swept LSU at home. After losing 2-1 to Southern Miss at Hattiesburg on March 10, the Rebs dominated the Golden Eagles Tuesday night on the new turf at Trustmark, banging out 11 hits, six for extra bases. Senior right fielder Tristen Bissetta led the way with four hits, including two doubles and a prodigious home run that left the park in nano-second and might have landed somewhere in Flowood. It was Bissetta’s 16th home run in just 38 games since transferring from Clemson for his senior season.
“Yeah, that was a good one,” Bissetta said. “It was a fastball and I put my best swing on it and connected. They say it’s hard to hit homers in this park, but I got that one.” (Writer’s note: It is hard to hit homers in this park!)
Bissetta’s line drive carried well over the Southern Miss bullpen in right center field, a no-doubter if there ever was one. In the Ole Miss lineup, Bissetta bats second, right behind Judd Utermark, who has slammed 15 homers. Most teams prefer to bat their most powerful hitters third or fourth in the lineup. Bianco apparently prefers to have his most feared sluggers bat first and second so that they will come to the plate as often as possible. It doesn’t hurt that both Uttermark and Bissetta can run, too. They are, as most of the Rebels, quite athletic.
Baseball, as any knowledgeable fan knows, is a game of streaks. When Mississippi State swept Ole Miss, the Bulldogs had won eight straight games. They have lost six straight conference games since. When Southern Miss beat Ole Miss n Hattiesburg, it ended a stretch during which the Golden Eagles won 15 of their first 17 games against what was the nation’s most difficult schedule at the time. Southern Miss is 10-10 since and has now lost three straight for the first time since March of last year.The Eagles, once 15-2, are now 25-12.
“We’ve got to find a way out of this storm we’re in right now,” Eagle skipper Chris Ostrander said. “That’s all there is to it.”
A reminder: Southern Miss had the exact same 25-12 record this time last year. They proceeded to win 22 of their last 26 games, winning an NCAA Regional and losing 5-4 to Miami in Game 3 of a Super Regional, both of which the Golden Eagles hosted.
In college baseball, it’s all about getting hot at the right time, which is late May and June. Ole Miss needs to stay hot. Southern Miss (and Mississippi State) need to get hot again.
Said Bianco Tuesday night, “All three of our Mississippi teams are nationally ranked. All three are consistently winning programs. In a state of just three million people, that’s pretty good. College baseball people around the country know there’s good baseball here in Mississippi.”
Consistency is the key in baseball at any level. At Ole Miss, under Bianco, consistency has been the rule.
This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Source: Original Article
