Ole Miss hosts Florida this weekend for three games at Swayze Field. The series is scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. Friday with 1:30 p.m. games on Saturday and Sunday, though inclement weather could shift the game times.

Should rain prevent Friday’s game, the Rebels and Gators would play two nine-inning games on Saturday — most likely starting at 1:30 p.m. — and then the finale as scheduled on Sunday.

Here’s what’s on my mind entering the weekend.

The Southeastern Conference part of the schedule started with a thud last weekend, as Vanderbilt dominated Ole Miss for three games in Nashville.

The Commodores outscored the Rebels, 27-4, holding Ole Miss to two hits in one game, four hits in a game and then shutting out the Rebels in another game.

Veteran players kept a closer eye on the newcomers following the series to make sure they know it’s just one week. Two things remain true: Ole Miss has to be better. Ole Miss shouldn’t panic after only one series.

“It’s not going to get easier,” Mike Bianco said. “At some point you have to get tough enough to handle it. We’ve talked about it a lot. We have to be better and we have to be tougher. We weren’t. Other teams played well, and we did nothing to combat that.”

Ole Miss also lost to Jacksonville State last week prior to Vanderbilt and broke the four-game losing streak with an 11-1 win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Tuesday.

“We did not perform very well and in this league if you don’t perform well you’re going to get run through and that’s kind of what happened,” Peyton Chatagnier said. “For whatever reason that may be. We know that. We know we’re a better team than that. I don’t think anybody’s pressed or worried. It is what it is. It’s baseball.”

The schedule isn’t easier, however. Florida took two of three from Alabama to open league play and is 19-4 on the season with a series win over Miami. The Gators swept Charleston Southern and Sienna and took two from the Hurricanes and Jacksonville in non-league series.

Bianco has stayed even, of course, with his team but also challenged them. It’s the first bit of adversity for a team that dominated Big Ten teams three straight weekends.

“When you get punched in the mouth, you have to handle it better than we did last week,” Bianco said. “That being said, the great part of this game is the tough part of this game. It can really humble you. You have to get up and play again and the good teams do. You have to handle the ups and downs.”

Part of handling things better is to pitch better.

Ole Miss isn’t throwing enough strikes and is getting into bad counts far too often this season. It’s not a shock considering the Rebels are down three of their top arms and have two newcomers in the weekend rotation.

Ace Hunter Elliott is out until at least April, closer Josh Mallitz is out for the season, and Riley Maddox doesn’t have a timetable for his return, though it could be this season.

More bad news came on Tuesday, with reliever Matt Parenteau scheduled to see a doctor on Monday about his elbow. He had a grade II UCL tear last summer.

Ole Miss has allowed the third most walks in the conference with 101, one fewer than Georgia and 34 fewer than Mississippi State. Tennessee has allowed 48 to lead the SEC. Ole Miss has also thrown the third fewest innings in the league.

“They live on the edges a little too much and then it snowballs,” Bianco said.

Ole Miss weekend starters have gone five or more innings in five of the 15 starts to date. Jack Dougherty went six innings against Maryland for his season high, Xavier Rivals went five innings against Purdue, and Grayson Saunier pitched through the fifth against Minnesota.

The Rebels, in the SEC, are 12th in opposing batting average, 11th in strikeouts, 13th in earned run average, ninth in hits allowed, 13th in home runs allowed, tops in most wild pitches and third in most doubles allowed.

There’s a Florida angle that contributed to Ole Miss’ pitching depth issue.

Nick Pogue committed to Ole Miss from Florida out of the transfer portal in June but signed a free agent contract with the Nationals after going undrafted. He was expected to be in the weekend rotation.

Pogue was in the Gators’ weekend rotation at the end of 2022 after Tommy John recovery and held opponents to a .239 batting average against.

Florida is a tough matchup statistically because of its offense.

The Gators lead the SEC in batting average, runs scored, triples, slugging percentage and total bases and are second in home runs and doubles.

Florida is averaging 10 runs per game but scored eight, three and three against Alabama last weekend.

Josh Rivera leads Florida with a .417 average and .514 on-base percentage. Cade Kurland is hitting .386 and two-way player Jac Caglianone is hitting .380 with a 1.343 OPS. Caglianone and Rivera have 13 and 10 home runs, respectively.

PITCHING MATCHUPS FOR THE WEEKEND

Friday - Ole Miss: RHP Jack Dougherty

2-2, 6.14 ERA, 25 K, 6 BB

Florida: RHP Brandon Sproat

4-0, 2.73 ERA, 43 K, 14 BB

Saturday - Ole Miss: RHP Grayson Saunier

1-1, 6.30 ERA, 26 K, 15 BB

Florida: RHP Hurston Waldrep

3-1, 4.00 ERA, 47 K, 13 BB

Sunday - Ole Miss: LHP Xavier Rivas

4-1, 5.40 ERA, 28 K, 13 BB

Florida: LHP Jac Caglianone

3-0, 3.20 ERA, 32 K, 10 BB

Ole Miss faced Waldrep in the Hattiesburg Super Regional last season before he transferred from Southern Miss to Florida. The right-hander allowed six hits and five runs — four earned — in five innings with 12 strikeouts and four walks. He threw 101 pitches.

There have been several moments over the past 15 years when my mind went to Ernie LaBarge during key times with Ole Miss baseball.

That last happened in June as the confetti fell on the Rebels at the College World Series. My brain was spinning in a number of directions, mainly about what to write in the coming hours, but for a second it stopped on LaBarge, the front man of the Ole Miss bullpen club in the early days of Bianco — a club that now bears his name.

LaBarge died March 13, 2008, and I wrote this on the 10-year anniversary of his death. Now, five years later Ole Miss has a title, a completed vision of what Bianco and LaBarge held as a combined goal when the two met for the first time at Dino’s Pizza in 2000.

The first Ole Miss bullpen club meeting happened 41 years ago this week at Smitty’s Restaurant. It was the primary brainchild of coach Jake Gibbs and Ron Borne, and that first season author Willie Morris gave the best defensive player, Andy Underwood, an actual shovel painted gold.

There were several hundred members at its peak in those early years, but when Bianco was hired in 2000, it had fallen to “38 or 39” supporters. Bianco’s plan was to stop worrying about accumulating money with the group. He wanted to accumulate support and interest and see if that would turn into season ticket holders and more dedicated fans.

LaBarge ran with Bianco’s outline and was a consistent, uplifting presence at Ole Miss baseball events every season until his death. He walked through the stadium drying off wet seats, picking up trash and filling in wherever needed.

A military man who was 70 years old when Bianco was hired, LaBarge shared the head coach’s attention to detail and was tireless as momentum built.

Ole Miss had an average attendance of 1,254 in 2000, and that ballooned to 4,362 just four seasons into Bianco’s tenure. LaBarge died a year before the stadium expansion that pushed average attendance over 7,000, and the Rebels sold approximately 8,500 season tickets this season.

The Ernie LaBarge Bullpen Club has regular meetings and is one of the largest college baseball support groups in the country.

The number of people at Swayze Field who remember LaBarge dwindles by the year. Time passes and what’s present is talked about more than what used to be there.

But for those who remember the before, they remember LaBarge. Bianco needed someone on the ground in those early days, and he was that person.

There are many things over the last 15 years I wish he had seen. The work he did made a lot of those things a little more possible.

Many of you know I run to podcasts instead of music. It gives me something to focus on that’s not feet hitting pavement and my lack of fitness over the miles.

Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson is one of my main go-to podcasts, and on Sunday I spent six miles with his episode featuring Abby Davisson, an expert on relationships — specifically decision making in regards to finance and romance.

I hit play because I trust Williamson to feature interesting guests, but by the end I wanted to share it because every person entering into marriage or considering a longterm relationship needs to hear the episode.

Some couples go through counseling prior to marriage and some have the hard compatibility conversations, but too often those months of planning and questions revolve around flowers, menu items and photographers instead of true compatibility in the minutiae of making lives work together with the same wants and goals.

Compatibility — with at least intentional communication — is required in a lot of forms to avoid resentment or issues.

Marking career ambitions and how to navigate those pursuits for both people and what money will be spent on and how, especially as kids become involved, is a main point where preparation can avoid calamity.

And, even if there’s compatibility, a little workshopping and being a little bit better is definitely a good thing.

Williamson and Davisson go through tips for all stages of relationships — including how to have an honest talk about what if it doesn't work out — but it’s the section about those just entering into deeper commitment that really struck me.

Share it. Send it to those who need it. Give it a listen. I was expecting to only be distracted from the run. I, instead, went longer to listen to more of it.