Get to Swayze: Ole Miss baseball in exhibition action against UALR on Saturday afternoon
Football isn’t the only Ole Miss sport in action on Saturday.
Rebel baseball is set to host UALR for the first of two scrimmages of the fall intrasquad season at 2:30 p.m. CT. The teams will play 12 innings at Swayze Field and admission is free. The Rebels will welcome SEC foe Alabama on Oct. 30. Start time for that contest will be announced at a later date.
“We’ve been out now a couple of weeks,” head coach Mike Bianco said. All fall exhibitions and intrasquad scrimmages will be streamed live on the Ole Miss baseball Facebook page at THIS LINK. “Two weekends, to be exact, of intrasquads, and finishing up our second week of practice. We started a little bit later than we normally do. We start, normally, the third week of September. But back in 2019 they changed the recruiting calendar, which took about a month of recruiting away in the fall. Because of that, in 2019, we pushed our fall practice back later just so we could give the coaches a little more time to be out on the road recruiting rather than jumping back and forth.
“Off to a good start. Not many surprises. Tim Elko is recovering from surgery and doing really well, along with Max Cioffi. Hayden Dunhurst has been back out on the field swinging, but still recovering with the thumb injury and will only (serve as a designated hitter) this weekend. Probably will catch soon. Started catching some short works this week and will be out there soon.”
The Rebels return their entire lineup, led by Elko, the two-time team captain, though, as noted by Bianco, he’s out as he recovers from surgery to repair a torn ACL. Ole Miss was No. 13 in the country in home runs a year ago. The Rebels finished 45-22 and fell one game shy of reaching the College World Series for the second consecutive postseason.
On the pitching side, Ole Miss lost co-aces Gunnar Hoglund (first round, Toronto Blue Jays) and Doug Nikhazy (second round, Cleveland Guardians) to the MLB Draft in July. In response, the Rebels dove into the transfer portal for Texas A&M Corpus-Christi lefty John Gaddis and Oregon State righty Jack Washburn. Washburn was a teammate of Gonzalez and catcher Hayden Dunhurst with Team USA over the summer.
“It’s been good,” Ole Miss hitting coach Mike Clement said, in an exclusive interview with On3. “On some level, kind of know what we’ve got offensively. But the important thing for us offensively is individually, guy by guy. We’ve gone through some deficiencies of what they really want to work on a little bit, and I think the broader picture of it is the pitching side of things.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be completely settled on the pitching, and I don’t mean that as a negative, it’s just one of those things where we don’t have the returning starters that have had success that you’re going to pound your fist on the table for. Without those guys (Gunnar Hoglund and Doug Nikhazy), we really like what we have, but I think there’s always going to be a little bit of, ‘Well, they haven’t done it quite yet.’ So I think that goes on until the season when we know what we’ve got. But I do really like a lot of the pieces. They’ve thrown well in their two weekends. I think we have the makings of a really good staff.”
For today’s scrimmage, parking will be available across from the stadium on Taylor Road as well as the parking lot behind left field. Gates, limited to the ones behind home plate, left field, and the student gate in right field, will open at 11 a.m. CT.
Ole Miss has announced its full spring schedule. Season ticket renewals are going on now. Log in to your account at OleMissTix.com to renew or to purchase new season tickets today. The priority deadline to renew season tickets is Oct. 31.
Oct. 16 – Ole Miss vs. Little Rock (1 p.m. CT)
Oct. 30 – Ole Miss vs. Alabama (Time TBA)
Nov. 12 – Pizza Bowl (Time TBA)
Nov. 15-19 – Omaha Challenge
