OXFORD – Ole Miss junior third baseman Luke Hill had every opportunity to leave the Rebels’ baseball program had he wanted to in the offseason. But the second-year Ole Miss star opted to take the tougher road.
Over the last few days, it’s become abundantly clear that his choice paid off.
For the first time since winning the College World Series in 2022, Ole Miss baseball is back in the big dance. And for the first time since 2021, postseason baseball is coming to Oxford.
Ole Miss – the SEC Tournament runner-up – earned a No. 1 seed in the 2025 NCAA Baseball Tournament and will host one of the 16 national regionals. The Rebels, the No. 10 national seed, will be matched up with No. 2 seed Georgia Tech, No. 3 seed Western Kentucky and No. 4 seed Murray State in the Oxford Regional. The Oxford Regional is paired with the Athens Regional and No. 7-seed Georgia.
Ole Miss plays Murray State on Friday at 7 p.m. The game will be broadcast on ESPN+. The Rebels and Racers already played once this season on March 5, an 8-7 Ole Miss victory in 10 innings.
The tournament berth snaps a two-year absence – the longest under head coach Mike Bianco – and officially puts the finishing touches on a massive turnaround for a team picked to finish 15th out of 16 teams in the SEC’s preseason poll.
Following a historic 2022 postseason where the Rebels, one of the last teams selected into the tournament field, won the program’s first national title, Ole Miss struggled each of the next two seasons, finishing under .500 both years with a combined SEC record of 17-43.
Ole Miss went 27-29 in Hill’s first season after transferring from Arizona State. Those 2024 Rebels lost their final six games – the last in walk-off fashion to Mississippi State at the SEC Tournament. And, despite losing a handful of players including eventual first-team All-SEC selections Liam Doyle and Andrew Fischer to Tennessee, Hill and junior first baseman Will Furniss kept the Rebels (40-19) together when things could have fallen apart.
“The expectation here, like I said, is to host regionals and stuff like that. And, just when you’re doing that and you’re winning … it’s so much fun,” Hill said Monday. “The fans are involved, the whole town is rallying around you, and it’s like you’re fighting for a town and a state at the same time. What more could you ask for as a college kid? That’s everything that you dream of when you go to sleep at night as a middle schooler. You want to be in these situations, and we get to live those out right now. So, it’s a pretty awesome experience.”
Ole Miss reloaded via the transfer portal in the offseason and depended on the veteran leadership of its three holdovers from the 2022 title team. Pitchers Hunter Elliott, Riley Maddox and Mason Nichols led the charge for a pitching staff that decreased its team ERA by 1.41 under first-year pitching coach Joel Mangrum.
That renewed pitching prowess combined with impact, veteran transfer position players like Mitchell Sanford, Ryan Moerman, Isaac Humphrey and Luke Cheng and key returners like Furniss and Hill helped settle the ship and propelled Ole Miss to 16 regular-season SEC wins, its most since 2021, and 20 overall counting the Governor’s Cup and SEC Tournament. Ole Miss entered the SEC Tournament as the No. 7 seed and defeated No. 15-ranked Florida, No. 5 Arkansas and No. 1 LSU before falling to No. 9 Vanderbilt in Sunday’s title game.
Ole Miss last hosted a regional in 2021, when the Rebels eventually defeated No. 2 seed Southern Miss to advance to the Tucson Super Regional.
“It’s one of our goals. It’s not just to make it to a regional, but to host it, to be one of the final 16 when the season ends,” Bianco said. “It’s a great reward for the players, it’s a great reward for our great fans. And it’s special to play at home in postseason. So, it’s good to be back here, and I know the guys are excited to continue in Swayze.”
Georgia Tech, ranked No. 16 in the latest D1Baseball poll, won the ACC regular season title and is 40-17 overall. The Yellowjackets lost to Clemson in the ACC Tournament. Western Kentucky (46-12) won the Conference USA Tournament, and Murray State (39-13) won the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season and tournament championships.
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