Parham: MSU dominance adds layer to overall picture of Ole Miss program
OXFORD | The reasons are abundant for why Sunday — and this weekend as a whole — was the most catastrophic time of the season for Ole Miss.
After two weeks of productive work to jump into the hosting conversation and assure another solid SEC regular season, the Rebels crashed back to the reality of in-state second fiddle and public opinion wondering if it’s another chapter of Groundhog Day.
Mississippi State finished off the sweep, 11-5, on Sunday, using a nine-run inning all with two outs to beat the Rebels for the 11th time in the last 12 games and for the 14th time in 16 games since 2016.
"It was a really bad weekend for us," Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco said. "Just a shame. So much riding on the weekend and you're playing your arch-rival. You really play awful."
It’s the first time Ole Miss has been swept at home since the Bulldogs did it at Swayze in 2017 and the first sweep anywhere since at Florida that same season. The Rebels close out the regular season with a road date at Arkansas State Tuesday and a three-game set at Tennessee starting Thursday.
State last won six straight games in Oxford from 1948-1950.
Ole Miss (32-20, 15-12) is currently fifth in the SEC and will play a Tuesday single elimination game at the SEC Tournament. The Rebels can’t mathematically pass Vanderbilt or Arkansas in conference winning percentage and would lose a tiebreaker against Mississippi State or Georgia.
The evaporation of a potential top-four SEC Tournament seed and fall to the mid 20s in RPI are the metric malices the Bulldogs provided, throwing the Rebels from a fairly comfortable host team to a projected two seed. In road regionals since 2001, Ole Miss is 8-14 overall and only played two games with a chance at advancing to a super regional — losing both to TCU in 2012.
But beyond the relative resume hits, State’s repeated success in the rivalry ratchets up pressure on the Ole Miss program and pushes more fans and supporters toward the path of wanting considerable change.
The consistent debate of regular season success versus postseason failure adds the extra element of clear separation between the two Mississippi SEC programs. The Bulldogs, while not as consistent in the regular season, have shown how college baseball is regarded as a postseason sport.
MSU has been to three straight super regionals and and finished third at last year’s College World Series. These Bulldogs are 42-10 overall, 18-9 in SEC play and a likely lock to be a top-8 national seed under first-year coach Chris Lemonis.
Ole Miss has been to one super regional since 2009 — a 2014 win in Lafayette, Louisiana on the way to a 2-2 record in the College World Series. The Rebels have gone 2-6 in the NCAA Tournament since that Omaha appearance.
All those statistics worsen when combined with the optics of Ole Miss’ No. 1 enrolled signing class nationally winning one game versus the Bulldogs in three seasons.
This postseason is to be determined obviously, but there’s significant pressure to perform following a missed NCAA Tournament and the Tennessee Tech meltdown the past two years, respectively.
Ole Miss can potentially get back into No. 1 seed territory with a great weekend at Tennessee, but these last few days sent setbacks to the Rebels in multiple ways. With the on-the-field product competent but volatile, a notable percentage of supporters have a diminished belief in the program’s direction.
The next few weeks will definitely define this team. It's a pivotal piece in defining the era, as well.