Ole Miss and Arkansas get started with two games on Friday after a rainy forecast postponed Thursday night’s series opener.

The Rebels (17-11, 1-8) and Razorbacks (23-5, 6-3) will play two nine-inning games with an hour between them. The series finale is set for 2 p.m. on Saturday. Thursday’s ticket will be used for game one and Friday’s ticket will be use for game two.

Here are the things on my mind for the fourth SEC series of the season.

Math is becoming one of Ole Miss’ biggest enemies as the midway point of the SEC slate nears.

The Rebels are 1-8 in the SEC after three weekends and need to turn things around quickly to keep the postseason a possibility. The good news is the schedule seems to ease up for the most part, but realistically Ole Miss needs to go at least 12-9 and possibly 13-8 the rest of the way to make the NCAA Tournament.

LSU in 2021 is the last SEC team to start 1-8 and make the postseason. Those Tigers lost a home series to Mississippi State and were swept by Tennessee and Vanderbilt to start league play but finished 13-17 and got into — and won — the Eugene Regional.

LSU was 4-11 and 6-14 at different points of the conference season but won the final three series of the season against Auburn, Alabama and Texas A&M. The Tigers took two of three in Oxford but dropped the finale when the Rebels stormed back late and Kemp Alderman hit the walk-off home run.

LSU did it that season without a sweep, so it’s possible without anything crazy for the Rebels. What would a path potentially look like to 14-16 for Ole Miss? Let’s give it a shot while also knowing that SEC series aren’t played on paper, and the Rebels have to play better for it to matter.

2-1 - Arkansas

2-1 - at Mississippi State

1-2 - LSU

3-0 - Georgia

2-1- at Missouri

2-1 - Auburn

1-2 - at Alabama

Even with a series loss at Alabama, that’s 14 wins with a sweep of Georgia. Make Georgia a series win instead, and Ole Miss would need to get a committee break at 13 wins or beat Alabama twice in Tuscaloosa. The Rebels have won five of their last six at Alabama.

Frankly, Ole Miss needs two things to make the math work — a sweep at some point to give some margin for error and a series win this weekend. If the turnaround doesn’t start now, the thought process above becomes a little less believable.

Florida and Vanderbilt have two of the nation’s best pitching staffs, but even so, it’s time for Ole Miss to do more offensively.

The Rebels lost a great opportunity for a series win last Sunday in College Station, getting in the Aggie bullpen in the third inning with a three-run lead but scoring just once the rest of the way.

Ole Miss has one regular — Calvin Harris at .389 — hitting over .294 in SEC games (though Will Furniss has started five games and is hitting .313), and more than half the order is hitting .243 or worse.

In the nine league games, Ethan Groff is 9-37, Anthony Calarco is 7-30, TJ McCants is 5-28, Reagan Burford is 3-18, Ethan Lege is 3-20 and Peyton Chatagnier is 2-34.

Here are team stats versus opponent stats for Ole Miss in conference play. The first number is Ole Miss. The second number is opponents versus Ole Miss.

Batting average: .230, .314

OPS: .699, 1.011

Runs: 47, 75

Hits: 68, 100

Doubles: 20, 17

Triples: 0, 2

Home runs: 8, 24

Total bases: 112, 193

Walks: 33, 40

Strikeouts: 84, 79

On-base: .321, .404

Slugging: .378, .607

Stolen bases: 10-10, 17-19

Mike Bianco and Van Horn will face each other for the 75th and 76th times when Arkansas and Ole Miss play the Friday doubleheader.

That’s the most meetings between two SEC baseball coaches, as the pair passed Skip Bertman and Ron Polk last season. Ole Mis is 42-32 against Arkansas since the two coaches started playing in 2003.

"It's going to be a really good series, and usually it's pretty intense," Van Horn said. "They've got great fans, they draw big crowds. Everybody's still trying to win. Nothing's settled right now. No one's buried yet, and no one's running away with it."

I think it’s become the No. 1 baseball rivalry in the SEC, as the fan bases can’t stand each other and the programs have respect for one another and are tired of each other.

The two teams have met 18 times over the past three seasons. Ole Miss lost two of three in Fayetteville last year before beating Arkansas two of three times in the College World Series.

In 2021, they played a weekend series that Arkansas won and also met in the SEC Tournament. In 2019, Ole Miss won the regular season series in Fayetteville, they split two games in Hoover and Arkansas took the Fayetteville Super Regional in three games.

The entire era is littered with memorable moments and series. Ole Miss swept Arkansas in Fayetteville the last week of the season in 2009 to win the SEC and did the same in 2005 to win the SEC West.

Arkansas swept a doubleheader from Ole Miss on the final day of the 2011 season to win the SEC West.

One of the more infamous moments came in 2006 when Brett Bukvich threw a pitch close to Arkansas catcher Brian Walker, who faked getting hit to the point that it led to an ejection after he lost it with the umpire a pitch later.

Consistency is the main reason for the built rivalry. Outside of Arkansas’ 7-23 season in 2016, the two teams have never finished worse than 13-17 in the league and combined that’s only happened twice.

Ole Miss won the national championship last season, while Arkansas has a second place finish and a third place finish under Van Horn.

Arkansas is going with left-hander Hunter Hollan in the opener and is TBA the next two games.

Hollan is 4-1 on the season with a 3.50 ERA across seven starts. Opponents are hitting .259 against him, and he has 35 strikeouts and 11 walks in 36 innings.

Alabama bombed Hollan for 10 hits and seven runs last weekend, but before that, he had allowed two or fewer earned runs in every start. He shut out LSU for 5.1 innings and held Auburn to two runs on six hits in six innings. Oklahoma State scored a run on three hits in four innings in the opener.

Hollan has a season high of 94 pitches. He’s thrown between 77 and 94 in every start since being on a pitch count against the Cowboys.

Hollan had a 3.59 ERA in 18 starts at San Jacinto College last season. He was drafted in the 15th round of the 2021 MLB Draft and was once a TCU commit.

Pitching injuries have the Razorbacks less than full strength, so Van Horn has to be strategic in using Hagen Smith, who has a 2.35 ERA in 30.2 innings.

Smith started all four nonconference weekends but has been back in the bullpen during conference play. He’s thrown 3.2 innings, 4.2 innings and three innings, respectively during the SEC weekends.

Van Horn uses him in a high-leverage situation that should result in multiple innings. He pitched twice against Auburn. Arkansas has won every game he’s appeared in this season.

SEC East

Vanderbilt 10-0

South Carolina 9-1

Kentucky 8-1

Florida 8-2

Tennessee 4-6

Missouri 3-7

Georgia 1-8

SEC West

Arkansas 6-3

LSU 6-4

Texas A&M 4-6

Alabama 3-7

Auburn 3-7

Mississippi State 2-8

Ole Miss 1-8

Thursday Scores

Mississippi State 12, Alabama 8

Vanderbilt 7, Missouri 6

South Carolina 13, LSU 5

Florida 6, Tennessee 1

Texas A&M 9, Auburn 5