Ole Miss baseball will look to extend its postseason winning streak with a road trip to national four seed Auburn for the Super Regional round of the NCAA Tournament.
The Rebels swept the Lincoln Regional last weekend with two wins over Arizona State and one win over national 13 seed Nebraska. Auburn took a gut punch in the first game of its regional with a loss to Milwaukee but rallied out of the loser’s bracket to win and advance on Monday.
This series guarantees an SEC team will advance to Omaha
for the College World Series with Ole Miss’ last trip in 2022 when it won a national championship and Auburn’s last trip also in 2022 where it went 1-2 including a loss to the Rebels.
Auburn head coach Butch Thompson is originally from Mississippi, which announcers will probably say a few dozen time this weekend, so prepare yourself for that story. He has absolutely revitalized this baseball program in his time at Auburn with five super regional appearances since 2017.
Starting game one for the Rebels will be reliable veteran Hunter Elliott who brings an unbeaten record in the postseason to the mound. Last Friday, he was touched up pretty good by Arizona State in a game Ole Miss won in 14 innings, so this will need to be a bounce back start for the junior lefthander. Elliott currently sits at 316 strikeouts for his career, which is 16 behind second place all time, so why not go ahead and get that done tonight?
Auburn will send Andreas Alvarez to the bump with a 10-3 record this season and a 3.52 ERA. He has struck out 103 batters in 79.1 IP, but in his most recent outing against NC State, he went 5.2 IP with four earned runs and only one strikeout with more than 100 pitches.
Both of these starters could go 5+ innings, and both bullpens have the ability to shut down the opposing lineups. This super regional is set to possibly be one of the lower scoring compared to the rest. What is concerning for Ole Miss fans there is that its offense has been spotty and inconsistent relying on its pitching staff to give it opportunities to pull ahead.
The folks at Kalshi give Auburn a 67 percent chance to win this series and go to Omaha, and right now it feels like Ole Miss needs better baseball this weekend than last to advance. It will all come down to how the team shows up and how this lineup is seeing pitches.
First pitch on Friday is set for 7 p.m. CT and is broadcast on ESPN2. First pitch for Saturday is 4 p.m. CT, and if necessary Sunday has a to be determined start time.
