COLUMN: Mike Bianco's Legacy Solidified at Ole Miss With 2022 National Championship
Last in, last out. That's the legacy of the 2022 Ole Miss Rebels baseball team.
On Memorial Day, known to college baseball fans as "Selection Monday," the chances of Ole Miss reaching the NCAA Tournament appeared to be dim. The Coral Gables Regional lineup was the second-to-last host site announced, and the Rebels found themselves as the three seed in Miami.
From the get-go, this team bought in once it punched its postseason ticket, and it never looked back.
It's wild to think that about a month ago, Mike Bianco's future in Oxford was in jeopardy. Sure, his teams at Ole Miss had been consistent in the regular season, but one Omaha trip in over 20 years while the rest of the SEC West seemed to rack them up regularly wasn't cutting it.
Not only did Bianco vanquish the ghost of never having won a road regional in his Ole Miss career, he rode that wave all the way to Omaha, and he didn't stop there.
The slogan as of late for Ole Miss has been "Don't Let the Rebs Get Hot," and "get hot" they did. The Rebels lost one game in Omaha to the Arkansas Razorbacks earlier in the week, but even that game had a bases-loaded situation in the ninth inning that could have won the game for Bianco's squad.
Not only did his team buy in, but the Rebel faithful did as well, and Bianco noticed.
"It felt like Swayze Field because of how partisan maybe it was, but man, it felt like a football game out there," Bianco said after winning game one of the College World Series finals on Saturday. "On the field, it was that loud. Swayze has been pretty loud. I don't know if Swayze has ever been that loud.
"When they played 'Sweet Caroline' whatever inning it was, I have never heard anything like that. Just impressive. Thankful. I think as a coach, it's really neat to sit back. And you don't do it too much in the game, but it was so loud that a couple of times you did. You look up and go, wow, all these people showed up here.
"It's not an easy place to get to. It's not a cheap place to get to. A lot of people, it meant the world for them to be here this weekend. They're passionate, aren't they?"
As a native Mississippian, I've followed Ole Miss sports for almost 24 years, and I've never seen a team do what this baseball team from Oxford just did. I've seen good teams in all sports at Ole Miss, and I've seen bad ones. I've never seen one flip on a dime as drastically as this 2022 team did, and it rode that wave all the way to the highest title in the land: national champion.
Mike Bianco's seat was hot in May, but his Rebs got hotter, and now his legacy is forever solidified at Ole Miss: he and his team are national champions.
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