OXFORD | Thomas Dillard admitted there were struggles reading line drives in recent weeks.
It’s a bad spot for indecision or second-guessing, as the split-second is all that’s acceptable for judging whether a ball is going to be caught, corralled in time to only advance a base or stay in play long enough to move first to third or second to home.
Dillard was a secondary lead from first base when Cole Zabowski’s one-out, ninth-inning single shot toward right-center. Dillard immediately broke hard and didn’t look up rounding second base. Third base coach Mike Clement went to the ground to signal a slide being necessary, and his runner obliged in relatively comfortable fashion ahead of the throw.
“It won the game for us,” Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco would later say.
After an intentional walk to load the bases, Texas A&M reliever Kasey Kalich sent a fastball to the backstop and Dillard sprinted home to a powder blue celebration. It gave Ole Miss a 3-2 walk-off win over the Aggies and Dillard his second end-of-game mobbing in three days. Courtesy of a 5-4 walk-off Friday and 13-3 bludgeoning Saturday, the Rebels swept Texas A&M to strengthen their postseason resume and SEC West position.
Ole Miss is 30-15 overall and more importantly 13-8 in the Southeastern Conference. The Rebels’ RPI ranking jumped from No. 29 to No. 22 during the weekend, and the Rebels are in second place in the West behind Arkansas. The Razorbacks are 13-6 with two games left on the weekend against Tennessee, and LSU and MSU are 12-8 with finales coming on Sunday. Texas A&M is 11-9-1 after the brutal weekend in Oxford.
While late-game offensive moments made for the dramatic memories twice on the weekend, Ole Miss surged back into the national conversation thanks to starting pitching three straight days. Will Ethridge and Doug Nikhazy both went deep into their respective games, and Gunnar Hoglund had his best outing of the season on Sunday.
Hoglund, a freshman former first round pick, gave up two runs on five hits in six innings. The three strikeouts without a walk kept the frames fairly clean and gave Hoglund a chance to work through the game without tension. Zach DeLoach hit a solo home run to start the fourth and break a string of nine straight retired by Hoglund following a single to begin the game.
He gave up a leadoff triple in the seventh before exiting to a nice ovation.
“I need to take this as confidence and build off it,” Hoglund said.
Ole Miss’ ceiling and weekend set-up change significantly if Hoglund can last into or past the fifth inning most weeks. He’s been effective the first time through the order throughout the season but struggled when it turned over. Hoglund gave up three of the five hits on the second pass of the lineup, but kept it to just the one run.
The breaking ball was better than past starts, and Hoglund stayed in the lower quadrants with the majority of his early-count fastballs.
After four errors Friday and a weekend full of defensive issues, Texas A&M was excellent in the field, including Cam Blake leaping against the left field wall to rob Grae Kessinger of a go-ahead home run in the eighth inning. Kessinger had a hit and a walk and scored twice to run his reached-base streak to 33 games.
Zabowski had two doubles and the single that sent Dillard to third base. He’s second on the team with a .346 average and 1.060 OPS in league play. His two-out double in the sixth gave the Rebels a one-run lead at the time.
Parker Caracci got his second win of the weekend with a scoreless ninth inning after Austin Miller pitched the eighth inning.
