Parham: Rebels keep lofty goals alive with Sunday win at Carolina

Mike Bianco and other members of the Ole Miss program used to talk about road series in the Southeastern Conference by saying hiccups were fine but throw ups had to be avoided.

The Rebels vomited all over Columbia for two days before securing a Sunday, 6-5, victory in 10 innings at South Carolina to keep multiple conversations alive.

The Gamecocks, winners of 7 of their last 9 SEC games, won by a combined 11 runs the first two games, but Ole Miss hit three home runs and got four innings and 74 pitches from Parker Caracci to come home with the most pivotal of swing games.

Ole Miss (36-13) is now 13-11 in the Southeastern Conference with Casey Mize and top-10 RPI Auburn due in Oxford on Thursday. The possible 1-1 MLB Draft pick this summer is coming off a 15-strikeout complete game against Vanderbilt and has spent much of the year fairly unhittable.

Alabama, the SEC’s worst team, hosts the Rebels to end the regular season, and while that’s handy from a win-loss standpoint, Ole Miss has to play well — better than recently when it has lost five of the last six away from Swayze Field.

The Rebels were projected as a consensus national seed prior to getting on the plane for Columbia, and while losing a series isn’t ideal, the come-from-behind squeaker in the finale kept pace somewhat if Ole Miss builds off its 25-4 record at home and does its job against the Crimson Tide.

Five more SEC victories in the regular season are the goal to provide some comfort — and likely leave manageable work to do — in Hoover.

Since 2002, only one SEC team has been a national seed without 20 wins counting the regular conference season and the SEC Tournament. South Carolina in 2012 had an SEC game rained out and went 18-11 in the SEC and 1-2 in Hoover, finishing second overall and winning the East.

South Carolina in 2004 is the only national seed from the SEC to lose more than 12 regular season SEC games , but those Gamecocks went 4-0 in Hoover. There are plenty of examples of 20 total wins not being enough, but it’s a significant sample size of selected national seeds to determine that benchmark as an important line of demarcation.

The most likely path for Ole Miss to meet that criteria is 18-12 and then two wins in Hoover, but there’s little separation among a blob of teams in this positioning group. Auburn swept Vanderbilt to tie the Rebels in the standings and set up a key tiebreaker series this coming weekend. The Tigers then finish with LSU.

Arkansas, currently trailing LSU in the rubber game, will be one ahead of Ole Miss and Auburn in the West if that score holds. And Georgia, another contender for a national seed, swept Mizzou to move to 15-9 in the SEC. The Bulldogs are in great current shape but need to find victories against the brutal two-weekend finish of Florida and the Razorbacks.

Georgia is an impressive 15-7 in Group One games.

On the host side of things, the Rebels are currently at 11 in the RPI and have hosted seven times in this postseason era, It took more than 16 conference wins all but once. The 2007 team hosted and was a one seed at 16-14 in the SEC.

Ole Miss boasts an impressive 6-3 record against the RPI top 25 which is the the current mark that most other teams in this category can’t match.The Rebels are 11-10 against RPI Group One which isn’t a major plus but it’s not a detriment either when it comes to national seeds. The loud series wins against Georgia, Arkansas and at Texas A&M are carrying the resume.

Other than Florida, which won its 18th straight series, the league is cannibalizing itself, which is needed context when evaluating this Ole Miss team and resume. Things aren't in a vacuum.

Overall, the starting pitching isn’t performing to a level that wins in the postseason, and situationally ,the Rebels have struggled defensively at times. There’s a bit of a wait-and-see approach with the bullpen, but it’s not the deep strength that was expected as late as March.

Things aren’t catastrophic or anything, though, partly thanks to Sunday’s victory. The offense put up 17 runs in the middle of trouble everywhere else at South Carolina. There’s a lot more ability with the rotation than is being delivered, and the bullpen has at least lighting-in-a-bottle capability.

The other SEC teams are talented and trying, too, so there’s a bit of head above water as the goal when Alabama isn’t in the other dugout. But the Tide is still to come, and good teams win home series while avoiding disaster on the road. For another week Ole Miss did that.

The Rebels have to take a series vs. Auburn at home and then take winning baseball on the road at Alabama if they want a chance at not playing on someone else’s field unless it’s Creighton this postseason.

That’s what the South Carolina matinee did for them. Kept alive the chance at taking care of their own business the rest of the way.