'You Want Them Ready': Ole Miss baseball is a win away from its first national championship
OMAHA, Neb. – Here it is. The moment the players and coaches strive for when the season begins and Ole Miss is a win away from it.
Ole Miss defeated Oklahoma 10-3 on Saturday to start the College World Series final, needing just one more to hoist its first national championship trophy in program history.
Besides having to face Arkansas in back-to-back days earlier this week the path to Sunday and the potential to win a national title has been fairly stress-free.
The Rebels ran through the Coral Gables Regional and the Hattiesburg Super Regional with a perfect 5-0 record. They have only lost once in the postseason and are currently 9-1 in the NCAA Tournament.
Anticipation is expected for a team less than 24 hours from possibly reaching the mountain top and being the last team standing. Managing those expectations is one of the challenges a coach faces, especially with the quick turnaround.
For Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco, he is not shying away from the moment.
“I think they get it,” Bianco said. “We’ll talk about it in meetings tomorrow, but you want them ready. I think sometimes you worry too much about being too calm. That was the kind of the message today is to go for it. ‘You are here for the National Championship Series and you deserve to be here and it’s time to press the gas pedal and go for it, to be aggressive.’
“So we’ll try and juggle that. Again, I think they realize that you have to win. To win you have to play really well to beat a really good team in the other dugout. You don’t to this point not realizing that.”
Trying to stay in the moment and capture what is at stake should not be too hard for an Ole Miss team that was left for dead two months ago.
The Rebels were the worst team in the SEC entering May. Summer vacations looked to be assuredly starting in June and missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017 also nearly a sure bet.
Instead, Ole Miss got hot and became an improbable Cinderella story, though they don’t feel that way.
A roster full of veterans and experienced players has helped keep things calm as the stakes have gradually gotten bigger and bigger with each win racked up.
On Sunday, those stakes cannot be any bigger as a second straight win over Oklahoma comes with the national title for Ole Miss.
Players have managed to keep their emotions in check throughout this process, but after Saturday’s win it was hard for Tim Elko to contain himself as he was smiling ear-to-ear in the postgame press conference.
“As you know, I don’t really smile a whole lot. I usually keep a straight face,” Elko said joking. “No, we still have another game to win. It’s obviously great to win the first one, but we still have one more to take home the whole thing. Will be rested up tomorrow, focused up and ready to win one more.”
