David Dellucci, an All-American outfielder at Ole Miss and a member of the 2001 World Series champion Arizona Diamondbacks, played Major League Baseball for 13 seasons and is currently an analyst for the SEC Network. Each week during the college baseball season, Dellucci will provide his thoughts to Rivals.com.

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The first thing that came to me during Ole Miss’ winless weekend in Houston was that the opposing pitchers made the Rebels look like Ole Miss arms had made batters look through the first seven games.

Ole Miss was so fastball conscious that as soon as the ball was out of the release point they were already committing to the swing — mentally if not necessarily physically. They weren’t picking the ball up out of the pitcher’s hand.

Baylor and Texas Tech pitchers employed a lot of quality changeups that Ole Miss didn’t handle well. It was a new look considering the quality of the pitches, and it put the Rebels in a funk the rest of the weekend.

The difference in a changeup and a slider at the major-college level is that sliders break on a similar plane as a fastball. Even if you’re off the slider a little because you saw fastball, you can foul it off or make contact. It’s somewhat in the same place as you thought. The changeup always goes down and then towards you or away from you depending on handedness. It’s changing direction a lot more than the slider.

When I see hitters look bad on changeups, I see them not picking up the release point early enough. You can’t make a decision on whether to swing properly unless you see the pitcher throw it and identify the spin or the grip as quickly as possible. My immediate thought watching live was about the good hitters I played with and how they never overthought their approach at the plate.

Ole Miss got in a rut, took some good swings and then started overthinking the situation instead of going back to what they have done so well. During the seven-game winning streak they mostly saw the ball, saw it elevate and put a good pass on it. They didn’t think what they needed to do or how not to get out. The team had an active mind in Houston. They got overaggressive and wanted so bad to succeed that it harmed them.

You have to step back as a hitter and make sure the success of the at-bat is how you saw the pitch and took the right pitches and then put the correct swing on it — not necessarily the result of the ball in the play. Success is so dependent on numbers that when you are struggling and not getting the result you don’t remember what actually made you successful — seeing the ball and being relaxed.

Ole Miss looked like they were surprised when the ball was just under the bat. They tried to do too much. They played good-to-great competition and starting thinking too much. As I said, you have to see the ball well. After contact you can’t control where it goes. The Rebels tried to control everything.

It started on Friday, but it’s a tough fix in the middle of a series. In baseball the more you press the harder you try and the worse you get. Over the course of a bad series you’re in a spiral because the human urge is to become tighter when the answer is to slow the game down and slow the pitch down. Slow the mental aspect of it down. Relax and just see it before you decide whether to hit it.

Don’t make up your mind with the ball still in the pitcher’s hand. Baseball players struggle when they don’t just trust their abilities. In a bad series players will guess at pitches and swing sooner. Some try to pull and some try to only hit pitches down the middle. Those things increase the slump. Instead just see the ball and hammer it.

The beauty of college baseball is you get a day off to mentally relax and reset. In Major League Baseball you go back at them the next day, and it’s a black hole and a spiral because there’s no break.

The guys needed to use Monday as a break to reset the mental approach. Some of the newcomers may never have experienced three straight days of baseball failure like that, but this is a new level. It’s going to happen. No one thought it was going to be 56-0 or the only loss was going to be to Memphis. The players got a chance Monday to know they got beat by good pitching, now rethink the approach and try to punish the pitchers in the midweek to regroup.

That week of difficulty wasn’t physical. Ole Miss is as good physically as any team in that tournament. The season is about stages, and Ole Miss has a week to take the pressure off against Georgia State and Furman and then learn from this past stage before Vanderbilt comes to Oxford to open SEC play.

The Big 12 teams gave Ole Miss an idea of the difficulties to come. It forces you to get right mentally for the games that truly matter. Texas Tech and TCU have a lot of talent and the Rebels saw something similar to Vanderbilt two weeks early. They know what they need to do in order to be competitive against the Commodores and other SEC teams.

This all should prepare them mentally. Physically, they are ready, and now they mentally understand it. It adds purpose to practice. In the batting cage a player can work on what went wrong. This is what happened against Baylor. This is how Texas Tech pitched me. See the changeup elevated. Recognize the slider.

It’s legitimate swings with a purpose and a confidence. The Rebels didn’t have that in Houston. But they have it physically. That’s the good news, as Ole Miss can learn from it all and move forward.