The level of the goal determines the relevance of Tuesday’s Governor’s Cup game for Ole Miss.
The Rebels and Bulldogs get together at 6 p.m. at Trustmark Park in Pearl for their annual “non-conference” matchup in or near the capital city. It doesn’t count, but it also does kind of count when the resumes are printed and put in front of the NCAA selection committee in late May.
If the Rebels’ goal is to make the NCAA Tournament and get back into the 64-team field for the first time since 2022, then Tuesday is of little consequence. It’s a top-50 RPI game on a neutral site and won’t have any major barring on the metrics either way.
Ole Miss is completely safe right now when it comes to an at-large bid.
However, if hosting is the goal, this isn’t the typical Tuesday midweek slumber that comes with most of the season’s games outside of the weekends. There’s the chance it matters a lot if the Rebels find themselves on the host bubble with the committee looking at the margins.
Ole Miss (28-12, 10-8) sits at No. 22 in the RPI as of Tuesday morning, 10 spots worse than this time a week ago. That was before the Rebels lost to RPI 254 Little Rock and then two of three at South Carolina which is nearly a top-50 opponent but entered the weekend with just two SEC wins in 15 games.
The Rebels are 9-9 in quad one games and have a difficult but opportunistic remaining schedule with series against Vanderbilt (RPI 3), at Oklahoma (RPI 19), at Mississippi State (RPI 44) and Auburn (RPI 4). A home date with RPI 236 Tennessee Martin is also in there, so Ole Miss would be best served to win that one or cancel it (only half kidding).
Ole Miss needs an RPI inside the top 16 and at least 16 SEC wins to realistically expect a host nod come Memorial Day. Hosting at 15-15 can happen in this era's SEC, but the Rebels likely won’t have the metrics for that. Sixteen SEC wins also isn’t a guarantee with their current relatively flimsy RPI, but it’s the usual cut off.
That leads back to tonight. The Governor’s Cup doesn’t count in the regular season conference standings, but it’s on the team sheet as a conference game when the teams are dissected for NCAA inclusion. Sometimes it’s a tiebreaker and means a decent amount. Sometimes it’s not worth a hill of beans either way. Each committee is different, and there’s no trend outside of it seems to hurt you if you lose it more than helps you if you win it.
Considering the Rebels also have a loss to Texas from the opening week of the season in Arlington – a day before Ole Miss beat No. 2 Clemson and a day after the Rebels topped No. 18 Arizona -- that’s another potential “conference” setback for later.
It’s impossible to know if the Texas loss or a hypothetical loss tonight would swing things either way with a host bid. But it’s safer for Ole Miss to just find a win against the 24-16 Bulldogs who are 6-12 in the SEC.
The Rebels don’t want to present the option of being 16-16 in the league if the committee takes those two games into equal account – or even 16-17 if Ole Miss loses its first game in Hoover. It’s now a single elimination tournament.
Ole Miss needs the top 50 win. It needs the momentum heading into a home series with red-hot Vanderbilt. It also needs to remove a potential negative. No one knows what the committee will consider with these games.
But, in this case, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
