Champs, again: Ole Miss pounds LSU to win SEC baseball tournament
Antonio Morales
HOOVER, Alabama — LSU’s Paul Mainieri sat at the podium after his team wrapped up its sixth game of the SEC Tournament and its fourth game against Ole Miss this season, and was well aware of what he had just faced.
“I’ve coached against Mike (Bianco’s) teams now for 12 years and he’s had some really good teams,” Mainieri said. “I’m not sure he’s had a better team than he’s got put together (with) this year’s team.
“Honestly, I hate to put pressure on Mike … but that’s clearly an Omaha team and a team I think can compete for a national championship.”
The next few weeks will determine if the Rebels are Omaha-bound but there’s one thing they can call themselves for certain after Sunday: 2018 SEC Tournament champions.
Ole Miss earned that distinction with a 9-1 beatdown of the Tigers in front of 14,126 fans, the second-largest championship game crowd in tournament history, Sunday at the Hoover Met Complex.
Previously:Ole Miss advances to the SEC Tournament championship game, will face LSU
Now the Rebels (46-15) wait for the NCAA Tournament. The program hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 2014 and no player on this current roster has won a game in that tournament, but expectations will be high after the regular season and conference tournament Ole Miss just put together.
More:Ole Miss will host a baseball regional. What's next in the NCAA baseball tournament?
“Thanks, Paul,” Bianco said afterward. "As Nick (Fortes) said, I think (our players are) confident and know that we’re good and we can play well. But they also know this is a crazy game, this game of baseball, it has more to do with how well you play than how much talent you have. We’re in the position we’re in because this team has played well. We’re talented, we could do a lot of things. We can pitch it, we can play defense and we can hit but the biggest thing is to play well.”
On Thursday, the Rebels were three outs away from being eliminated from the tournament by Georgia. On Sunday, they were giving Bianco a Gatorade bath after they won their fourth consecutive game.
Ole Miss received contributions from several sources along the way. The main source was its pitching, which allowed just one earned run over its final 27 innings pitched.
Houston Roth was the latest to come through when he lasted 4 ⅓ innings and gave up just one run against LSU (37-25). This was a day after Jordan Fowler turned in a season-best six innings against Texas A&M.
Fortes was named SEC Tournament MVP after he went 10-for-18 (.556) with two RBIs, four runs scored and two stolen bases. Fortes put the Rebels ahead, 2-1, when he scored on a wild pitch in the third inning Sunday and extended the lead to two runs with an RBI single in the fourth. He went 4-for-4.
“Honestly, I was just going up there with the same approach every at-bat and just staying hard and flat through the middle, getting my foot down and being on time for everything,” Fortes said. “Just trying to do my job in the lineup.”
When Tyler Keenan injured his wrist earlier in the tournament, it forced Ryan Olenek to play third base and thrust Tim Rowe into the lineup at right field.
Rowe came through with a walk-off single against Georgia on Thursday. In the seventh inning Sunday, he followed a two-RBI single from Will Golsan (who recorded six hits himself over the past two days) with a two-run home run to over the 405-foot mark in center field to break the game open and give Ole Miss a 7-1 lead.
Previously:Ole Miss eliminates Auburn with a shutout win, continues its SEC Tournament run
Will Ethridge stepped up with three innings of relief against Texas A&M on Saturday. On Sunday, Ryan Rolison, who started against Auburn on Wednesday, pitched two innings of scoreless relief on three-days rest and escaped a bases-loaded jam in the sixth with two strikeouts. The second of which sent the Rebels contingent who were in attendance into a frenzy.
Fortes, Golsan and Thomas Dillard were named to the SEC All-Tournament team. So it required a true team effort for Ole Miss to win the tournament.
STORY CONTINUES AFTER GALLERY
“To have success here because of the amount of games, you have to have some guys step up. Some guys that maybe have been contributors but aren’t marquee guys,” Bianco said. “Houston Roth comes in and gets us into the fifth inning today with just one run. Yesterday, Fowler gets us that great outing. Greer Holston finishes off (today), we don’t even have to use (Parker) Caracci. So there are guys that step up throughout. Rowe, when Keenan goes down Rowe gets a walk-off hit, gets a big homer today. … But when you look, you don’t make it here without some contributions from some guys that maybe aren’t your stars.”
While the SEC Tournament championship is great, an even bigger stage awaits Ole Miss in the coming weeks as the program tries to return to Omaha for the first time in four years.
“This team just shows up and plays,” Rolison said. “If we have a bad game or we don’t show up, next game we’re going to show up. Obviously, the fan base we have and the home-field advantage we’re going to have at Swayze through regionals is going to be huge.”
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