Mike Bianco defends Ole Miss pitchers on short rest: ‘We emptied the tank’

Ole Miss‘ 2025 season came to an end over the weekend in the Oxford Regional Final with a 12-11 loss to Murray State.

The Rebel pitching staff had a disappointing weekend, as they allowed 33 runs in 45 innings (6.60 ERA) en route to three wins and two losses. Freshman left-hander Walker Hooks, who started the deciding game of the Oxford Regional, allowed eight hits and five earned runs in just 2 1/3 innings on Monday.

“We emptied the tank,” Bianco responded when asked about his pitching. “When we talked last night, it’s just too hard after the game. It’s too late. You’re asking these pitchers to do something they haven’t done all year. So it was a couple of things. Kudos to coach [Joel] Mangrum in being able to prepare them and have them in shape to be able to do some of this. You can tell when guys are pitching second or third time out, it’s just not the same stuff.”

Ole Miss had 14 different arms pitch in the Regional, with eight making multiple appearances. Left-hander pitcher Hunter Elliott led the way with seven innings (two appearances), and he was followed by 5 1/3 innings from right-hander Mason Morris (two appearances) and five innings from left-hander Gunnar Dennis (two appearances).

“You might look at the radar gun but it’s other things too. It’s the movement of the ball, it’s the location of the ball, the sinker, the balls are up, the guys that have rise in their ball, the ball’s not riding as much. It’s just tough. Very good offense on the other side. Man did they hit and they really hit all weekend long, even [Sunday] night. Just proud of those guys. We got here this morning and weren’t sure how a few pieces would feel. But like you’d expect, everybody wanted the ball. But in a lot of the measurements to see if their strength was there and so on, they were there physically and mentally. So everybody wanted to be down in the pen and get in the field.

Opponents scored at least six runs in all five games against Ole Miss.

“Im proud of Hunter [Elliott] and i’m proud of [Mason] Nichols. Hunter on one day’s rest with 100-plus pitches to come out and do that. But for Mason with the injury to pitch back-to-back days, we weren’t sure what we were gonna get and of course he was terrific. But [Riley] Maddox as well. All those guys took the ball for the third time and we just got beat. You can try to dissect it all you want, but they just beat us. It’s tough to swallow but you’ve just got to tip the hat to the team that played the best.”

Murray State now heads to the Durham Super Regional, while Ole Miss’ season comes to an end.