A year later, some of Mike Bianco’s memories of these few days a year ago are sharp.

Some have blurred over time.

Others, however, especially the ones involving telling his team that its season was over in the middle of March, are crystal clear.

It was Wednesday, March 11, 2020, and Ole Miss was preparing to face ULM in the second game of a two-game set in Monroe, La. The Rebels had won, 6-3, on Tuesday night to improve to 15-1. They had taken two of three from national power Louisville to open the season, swept Xavier and already sported wins over Southern Miss, East Carolina, Indiana and Memphis, among others.

Southeastern Conference rival LSU, also off to a hot start, was due in Oxford on Friday for a highly-anticipated three-game series. Swayze Field was expected to play host to massive crowds, eager to see one of the league’s best rivalries and enjoy some north Mississippi spring time.

There was a looming darkness in the news, however. Bianco throws himself into his team during the season, and coaches can become very insulated, but there was no escaping media reports and rumblings about the novel coronavirus. On that Wednesday afternoon, as the Rebels took batting practice, everything began to unravel.

It started with one proverbial tug of a thread.

“I just remember hearing that the Ivy League had canceled all spring sports,” Bianco said. “I just remembered that was a head-scratcher. I was like, ‘Really? I can’t believe they just did that, not pause, not wait.’ I was like, ‘That could never happen in the SEC or the ACC or the Power-5, right? They would never do that.’”

Several hours later, following Ole Miss’ 18-7 win over ULM, Chris Goudoras, Ole Miss baseball’s coordinator of operations, approached Bianco. He was urgent. Goudoras said Bianco needed to get on a conference call that night. Ole Miss athletics director Keith Carter was in Nashville, where the Rebels’ men’s basketball team was playing in the SEC Tournament, but Carter wanted all coaches on the call.

“It was just kind of weird,” Bianco said. “They were texting during the game and I was like, ‘We’re going to be on the road.’ (Goudoras) said, ‘There’s going to be a call and every coach has to be on it.’”

Interstate 20 between Monroe and Vicksburg, Miss., is a fairly desolate stretch of road. It’s some 77 miles of Louisiana delta, flat as the flattest of pancakes. There’s precious little scenery in that portion of northeast Louisiana, and the call Bianco was on was every bit as bleak as the landscape.

On the call, Bianco was told the series with LSU would be played but only a handful of parents and family would be allowed to attend. The call, Bianco recalled earlier this week, lasted a long time. Coaches had questions. Carter was trying to provide answers.

Bianco got off the phone and turned his attention to his players. The players, of course, had phones of their own. They were also watching ESPN in the bus. While Bianco was talking with Carter and other Ole Miss coaches, the Rebels’ players were learning about the events in Oklahoma City.

The NBA franchise there, the Thunder, was scheduled to tipoff against the Utah Jazz that evening, a game that had Western Conference playoff implications. Just before the game was to begin, it was stopped. The players left the benches. Then the officials grabbed their jackets and exited as well. Utah’s all-star center, Rudy Gobert, had tested positive for COVID-19. Within hours, the NBA season was shut down.

Bianco told the players to call their parents and let them know they’d be able to attend Friday night but tickets would be very limited. He had no idea at that moment just how awful the next two days would be.

On Thursday morning, Bianco learned that the SEC Tournament had been canceled and that spring sports had been paused until March 31. Still, the Rebels’ baseball team had practice early that afternoon.

“I called everybody up and I said, ‘We’re playing well. We’re not going to lose a beat. We’re going to have intrasquads. Doug (Nikhazy), you’ll pitch in the intrasquad on Friday. We’re going to have to ramp back up in two weeks,’” Bianco recalled.

Then the players went to lift weights and Bianco went to walk on the treadmill. He had ESPN on, and all Bianco remembers is the studio host was interviewing a basketball coach — maybe Gonzaga’s Mark Few, he thinks — when the network broke the news that NCAA president Mark Emmert had just canceled all spring sports and all spring championships.

Bianco called Carter, who was just digesting the news himself. An emergency meeting with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey was scheduled for Friday morning, Carter told Bianco. The league was considering moving forward with some form of SEC-only schedule, but the thing players and coaches dream of and work for — the College World Series — was canceled. The season was over.

“I’ve done this for a while now, and the last time you meet with that particular team, that year, at the end of the season, it’s always after a loss,” Bianco said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s after a regional, after a super regional or after the College World Series, every team loses their last game except the national champions. And I’m never really prepared. You know there’s a chance that you could lose and the season’s over but your mind doesn’t allow you to go there.

“It’s kind of an emotional time and I’m always kind of at a loss for words to try to put it in perspective. Well, now it’s the end of the season and I just told you there’s no College World Series and we just won 16 in a row. Normally you know the reason this is ending is because you have to win to move on and they all know that and that’s why they’re crying. I’m looking at them and they just thought it was another meeting and I have to tell them that the season’s over.”

Bianco has been Ole Miss’ coach since June 7, 2000. He’s talked to teams after regional losses. He’s talked to teams after devastating super regional losses and he’s talked to a team that had fallen just short of its goal in Omaha. Bianco has led the Rebels to 16 postseason berths, six super regionals and a College World Series appearance. He thought he’d seen it all. He hadn’t.

“I don’t ever remember a more emotional time,” Bianco said. “What a kick in the gut. The other things are sad, but you knew what the rules were. You had to win to move on. They were playing their best baseball. They’d just won 18 to whatever the score was against ULM and won 16 in a row and they did everything they were supposed to do. And now you have to tell them it’s over.”

On Friday, Bianco met the team one final team. Players were told to pack their things and head home. The facility would be closed to players and coaches alike on the following Monday. Players had questions. Bianco didn’t have answers.

“‘All I know is you’re not allowed back here this weekend,’” Bianco recalled saying. “‘You have to pack your stuff up and the season’s over. When we know more, we’ll contact everybody.’ It was a tough couple of days like it was for everybody.

“Those two days or three days were the toughest I’ve ever had as a baseball coach."

I asked Bianco if it was hard to let that team go. Was it difficult to not look back and wonder what could’ve been? That team had an almost tangible chemistry. It didn’t appear to have any real holes. The starting rotation was strong. The bullpen was deep and solid. The lineup was powerful. The defense was good. There was a mix of veterans and newcomers and it was a team full of young men who enjoyed each other.

Bianco said he had already begun to hear from friends and colleagues who said his team was one that had a real chance to return to Omaha in June. Suddenly, on March 13, on the day SEC play was to begin, it was over. Bianco would never know how far that team would go.

“We were playing really well and it was a good team but you know, now that you’ve asked me, I don’t know,” Bianco said. “I guess as you’re asking the question, I’m thinking that I don’t know if I’ve ever really allowed myself to think that way. I get why people say it but I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s for fear that I don’t want to be miserable. I don’t know but I know that I’ve never given it a ton of thought how good would we have been. Maybe it’s just part of how I’m built.

“I think I’m neutral thinking. I think I’m a realist. I try, when I need to be positive, I think I lean that way, but I think those things were out of my control. …I think the thing that made it so hard was for the kids, not for the program or what would’ve been with that team but just to look at those kids in their faces. I broke down talking to them. I can count on less than five fingers how many times I’ve cried, maybe in my life, and it was a tough time to look at those kids in the face and say, ‘I’m sorry I don’t have the answer and I don’t know why this is happening but we’re done and there’s nothing we can do about it.’”

Bianco is a husband and a father, also. At the time, the virus was an unknown, and there were reports of states locking down. His son Ben was playing at Louisville. Another son, Drew, was at LSU. Bianco wanted them to get home as soon as possible, nervous they’d get stuck.

“I was kind of like everybody where you want to put your arms around your family,” Bianco said. “I sent my team home and now it’s time to get my kids home.”

Earlier this week, Bianco was back on Interstate 20. This time, the Rebels crossed the Ouachita River and traveled 30 miles further west to face Louisiana Tech in a COVID-truncated series against Louisiana Tech. The Rebels and Bulldogs were scheduled to play two games, but after Ole Miss got notice of a possible COVID issue on Monday, one that meant three pitchers wouldn’t be able to make the trip to Ruston, the teams agreed to play just one game.

Louisiana Tech won Tuesday night, 13-1, meaning that bus trip on Interstate 20 wasn’t exactly pleasant.

But it’s different this time. The concerns now are baseball-related. How can the Rebels put together a better offensive approach? How can they clean up some defensive lapses that are proving costly. Ole Miss is 13-4 heading into SEC play, which begins at 6:30 p.m. Friday against Auburn in Oxford.

The COVID/baseball circle, if you will, is still not complete. The Rebels and Tigers will play, and Swayze Field will be basically normal, but the virus still looms, as Ole Miss experienced this week before traveling to Ruston.

“Will there come a time where we’re not getting tested?” Bianco said. “Will there come a time where we can put the whole team in a weight room? I don’t know. There are a lot of questions about the future that we don’t know.

“I don’t think I can close the loop on that circle until we really get to that normal. It’s hard to come full circle when we’re still dealing with it.”

A year later, of course, there’s a new perspective for Bianco, as there is for all of us.

“There was a lot of bad that came from this virus, obviously, with all the people that have gotten sick and the loved ones that we lost and the time,” Bianco said. “You know, you can give a year back to a college player but I had a kid who lost a graduation and a prom in high school. I’m a coach, but Ben was in the middle of a great year at Louisville and Drew and LSU were having a good season. We’ve all lost some things that are special to us.”

Bianco found a a real positive in those weeks and months immediately following the cancelation of the 2020 season. He and his wife, Cami, and their five children — Michael, Ben, Drew, Sam and Catherine — had dinner together every single night for two months. All of the kids took their turns cooking each week. Like it did for so many families, COVID brought the Bianco closer.

“We hadn’t done that in over 10 years, since they were all 12 and under, pre Little League stuff,” Bianco said.

And yes, even as the critical SEC portion of the Ole Miss schedule looms, even as Bianco works around an injury to Nikhazy and through some offensive struggles, the veteran coach admits COVID, and all that comes with it, has changed him.

The new perspective has led Bianco, he said, to learn to appreciate some things.

“I know to try to slow down,” Bianco said. “It’s really hard in today’s life and society to slow down and try to enjoy it a little more and appreciate the life that we’ve all been given. I know that sounds like a little much, but I think we’ve all been through much.”