Red Cup Rebellion

Ole Miss Rebels vs. Vanderbilt Commodores OPEN THREAD

2012-05-17T22:03:37Z

The final week of regular season Ole Miss baseball is upon us. The Rebels will travel to Nashville to take on Vandy (26-25, 13-14 SEC) in a series which, as I mentioned in today's The Local Voice column, is crucial to this team's postseason ambitions. The fine folks at Anchor of Gold agree, but from the Commodore perspective. Both teams need wins, and both will be fighting hard for them this weekend.

This series will begin tonight as it is a part of ESPNU's ongoing coverage of the finest brand of baseball in all of collegiate athletics. You have ESPNU, right? If not, your neighbor does. You don't like your neighbor? Then go to a bar or something. Look, the point is that you should watch this, alright?

From the mothership, the probable starters for the weekend are:

THURSDAY, 6:30 P.M. (ESPNU)
VU - T.J. Pecoraro, So., RHP
OM - Bobby Wahl, So., RHP

FRIDAY, 6:30 P.M.
VU - Sam Selman, Jr., LHP
OM - Mike Mayers, So., RHP

SATURDAY, 2:00 P.M.
VU - Kevin Ziomek, So., LHP
OM - TBA

Really looking forward to seeing what TBS has to offer his performance against Tennessee this past weekend.

OPEN THREAD BEGINS NOW

Ole Miss Post-Spring Depth Chart Analysis

2012-05-17T19:16:57Z

Yesterday, the football coaches released the Ole Miss Post-Spring depth chart. We, as you would expect, have some opinions and observations thereof. The depth chart as released by Coach Freeze is after the jump, with our annotations immediately thereafter.

There's not a lot of deviance from what was expected, though there are a few things of note...

1. We ain't got a quarterback.
If Bo Wallace nor Barry Brunetti can break free from this dead heat and assert himself as the starter, it's not because both of them are "just that good" at football. We'll leave it at that.

2. Collins Moore is currently listed as a starter in the slot at receiver.
This is surprising to me simply because of the receivers he is listed above. Vincent Sanders, Philander Moore, Randall Mackey, and Tobias Singleton (who has been moved to halfback) were apparently no match for Collins. I've heard he has had a strong Spring, but it's a little surprising that some players who have stuck out a little more in the past or were more highly sought after recruits aren't in that spot. I haven't seen enough of Moore's game to make a judgment call on this one, but the end result gives us two starting receivers who are sophomores and a third starter who is a junior. This should help with the evolution of our passing attack.

2a. Randall Mackey is indeed listed as a wideout.
So that makes the quarterback controversy a bit easier to sort out, we suppose. We don't know why the guy who got a the lion's share of quarterback work last season won't be so much as considered for the position, but we think it's safe to assume that he wasn't as keen on the playbook as Brunetti and Wallace.

3. Ferbia Allen is listed ahead of Jamal Mosley
I can't understand this one. This year is our chance to show some interested recruits that tight end isn't a forgotten position in Freeze's offense. We have a great athlete at the position in Mosley. Yet we're starting Allen over him. I don't dislike Allen at all. I think he has a lot of good game. Mosley simply has a higher ceiling. Whatever games we win this year are going to be built around playing good defense and producing a few timely big plays on offense. We won't be sustaining a lot of drives. I think Mosley gives you the big play ability that Allen doesn't.

4. Our backup left tackle is a walk-on.
His name is Derrick Wilson, and you've never heard of him. Uh-Oh.

5. Senquez Golson needs to come back to the football team and be a difference maker.
As it stands, our current backups are a walk-on, a third year player who hasn't done much, and a player who may or not be eligible tomorrow. Golson gives us another corner who can play good man defense and help our defense's glaring weakness of stopping the pass. Also, he's fast, which matters. We're not ready to entertain rumors of him being a grade casualty just yet for two reasons: we don't want to believe it's true and we're pretty sure every player on the depth chart aside from Andrew Ritter has been mentioned as a possible grade casualty at this point.

6. Serderius Bryant is running third string.
That's shocking to me mainly because I watched Bryant a lot on the field last year. I love his style of play. He has a reckless abandon for his body and explodes into every tackle. I guess it's possible that the coaches haven't gotten a chance to really see that yet since they've only watched him play Rebels vs. Rebels. I'd love to see him get on the field a lot this year.

7. Denzel Nkemdiche might start
Yay! He hits really hard. I'm excited to see what he can do.

8. So we're just abandoning this whole "CJ Johnson at linebacker" thing?
Because that's not really a huge problem. He's significantly undersized for an SEC defensive end, but he's really about it as far as guys who can get pressure on opposing quarterbacks go.

9. The guy who won the Chucky Mullins Courage award isn't a starter.
Pretty sure that's never happened. Again, that does more to explain our lack of significant seniority and depth than it does anything else.

10. Our "Mike" linebacker is named "Mike."
If only Brishen Matthews changed his first name to "Husky". Speaking of...

11. Brishen Matthews is a starter.
We're going to take the most positive thing away from this that we can, and that's that we've got enough guys in the secondary who are athletic enough to play multiple positions, because we've got all sorts of corners listed as safeties and safeties listed as corners and linebackers listed as safeties and, really, we've just got a lot of tweener types. Matthews, Charles Sawyer, Aaron Garbutt, Nkemdiche, Tanner Burns and Chief Brown seem to be relatively interchangeable throughout the secondary. Sawyer is clearly the one with the most big play and NFL potential, but I think we've got a "plug and play" secondary. I know, that could easily mean we've got a lot of players looking for a position or some positions just looking for a player, but it's May so I'm going to go with the more positive spin.

12. Chris Conely will be the holder.
Great for Chris. He's earned it.

Tailgating Making Strides at BYU

2012-05-17T18:43:23Z

Tailgating Making Strides at BYU

After visiting the Grove last year for the season opener, a few BYU fans were inspired to start a tailgating tradition of their own. They even mention their attempts to create a "Grove-like tent city" complete with good food and hospitality. Obviously there are some difficulties with this, not the least of which is the prohibition of alcohol by the Mormon faith and on the BYU campus, but they're working to make sure this is a success.

TLV #156 - This Weekend's Series is Important for the Rebel Baseball Postseason, so Pay Attention

2012-05-17T14:53:11Z

[ED: Press time on this was before we lost to Arkansas State, so read this as if I both assumed we won and didn't care at all to mention said outcome.]

So this is it. This is the final weekend of the regular season of Ole Miss Rebel baseball, a weekend which will yet again be spent somewhere outside of the confines of Oxford-University Stadium at Swayze Field. The #22-ranked Rebs will instead travel to Nashville to take on the inconveniently resurgent Vanderbilt Commodores in a series which will have significant impact on this team's position heading into the SEC Baseball Tournament and the NCAA postseason thereafter.

Naturally, the Rebels are riding a bit high, coming off of their lone SEC sweep of a, frankly, bad Tennessee team last weekend. The Commodores, however, have suddenly emerged as one of the hottest teams in the conference, coming off back-to-back series wins against LSU - in Baton Rouge, no less - and SEC standings leader Kentucky in Nashville. This was a team which was pegged as one of the SEC's championship contenders early, but with early losses - admittedly, most of which were to very good teams - and an inconsistent SEC season for the most part, Vanderbilt really slipped out of the SEC's collective baseball psyche as a threat. Now, though, it seems that they have begun to play at the level we all initially thought them capable of, which is unfortunately fitting for where it is we fell on each others' schedules this year.

So while we Rebels may be excited about the current second place position in the SEC West and fifth overall conference position, weeks removed from being a step away from the conference cellar, we should perhaps tone our optimism a bit against this Commodores squad.

For the Rebels to win this series, they'll need to first win the Thursday night matchup. Ole Miss has a winning formula for these opening games, even if said formula isn't always followed. Sophomore pitcher Bobby Wahl has been on point for the Rebs for much of the season in his starting role. When he is supported by ample runs and capable fielding, Wahl has the look of a dangerous SEC starter. This could spell good things for Ole Miss, as Vanderbilt has not done well at all in series opening games. In fact, Vanderbilt has only won one SEC series opener: their Friday night 5-4 win over Auburn in mid-April.

If the Rebels are to win that Thursday game, then the gameplan will undoubtedly be to throw the kitchen sink at the Commodores on Friday. At that point, the Rebels would simply need a series win to keep in good shape for postseason play, meaning they'd have little incentive to be frugal with the bullpen in anticipation of Saturday's game.

As it stands today, Ole Miss is the #5 seed in the SEC Baseball Tournament. If the tournament were to begin now, Ole Miss would face a talented and underachieving Arkansas team. The alternatives, though, to an Arkansas matchup are Auburn or Mississippi State - teams which Ole Miss has lost to this season - assuming a good performance against Vanderbilt, or a team like Florida or South Carolina, assuming a poor performance against Vanderbilt. The point of this being that our Ole Miss Rebels are in a bit of a position to either make their tournament first round easier or more difficult, depending on the outcome of this weekend.

Taking that one step further, if Ole Miss is to perhaps make some noise and upset a few teams in the SEC baseball tournament, the possibility of NCAA postseason baseball returning to Oxford - one of its rightful homes - becomes much more real. The Rebels are not at the moment in a position to host an NCAA tournament regional due to their away losses and RPI. Wins against Vanderbilt and in the SEC tournament, coupled with a few other teams slipping up elsewhere, could see the return of right field beer showers and "throw it in the dirt" chants one final time in 2012 in early June.

The series begins tonight, with that particular game being aired on ESPNU. Don't have ESPNU? Well you're holding a copy of The Local Voice, so thumb through this thing and find out which bars are airing it and serving whatever special it is you're in the mood for and patronize them. If you call yourself a fan, you haven't an excuse to miss out on at least the first game of the last series of this rollercoaster ride of a season.

Hotty Toddy.

The last coaches, they let certain things slide. Certain things were small, but eventually they...

2012-05-16T21:27:28Z

The last coaches, they let certain things slide. Certain things were small, but eventually they start building up and turn into big things and people started feeling like they could get away with more and more things. Since [Hugh Freeze]'s not letting little things slide, you’re seeing the team come together closer and closer and there are fewer problems.

That's Ole Miss linebacker Mike Marry, quoted in this Edward Aschoff piece on the changing attitude around Ole Miss football under Hugh Freeze.

Ole Miss Rebel Baseball: Lacking Something of Import

2012-05-16T19:06:35Z

Coming off of a sweep of the (bad) Tennessee Volunteers and in a position to improve its postseason stock, one would think the nationally ranked Ole Miss Rebels would make mincemeat out of a mediocre Sun Belt team during an otherwise non-noteworthy midweek matchup. Instead, they lost by five runs to Arkansas State last night, sucking some wind out of their post-sweep sails and failing to avoid an easy RPI damaging trap.

If you, like me, said "well, that figures" or "WAOM" or, really, anything along those lines of self-deprecation and honest awareness, then you too have noticed that this baseball program has shown an continued inability to defeat even inferior opponents when something significant is on the line. Furthermore, this team has been especially bad this season at winning close-fought contests, oftentimes losing late via sudden bouts of ineptitude or the inability to seize victory when it presents itself.

This season, Ole Miss is 4-6 in games decided by one run. Against the SEC, Ole Miss is 2-4 in games decided by one run. What's most frustrating about that is that, in those four one-run losses to SEC teams, the Rebels blew leads late and, in one particularly maddening case, failed to score when the opportunity to do so presented itself often.

The four one-run Rebel victories are:

A 2-1 win over Central Arkansas, a game that was truncated due to rain. The Rebels took the lead in the bottom of the fifth and won in seven.
A 2-1 win over Miami of Ohio where the Rebels led 2-0 for much of the game. The Redhawks scored one run in the top of the ninth.
A 2-1 win over Auburn where the Rebels took the lead in the 4th inning, after which neither team would score
A 1-0 win against Arkansas in a pitchers duel. Seven hits were accumulated total in the game. The Rebels scored the game's only run in the bottom of the sixth.

Those are pretty straightforward baseball games. Little 2-1 wins where a couple of runs come against middle relief or a slowing starter are pretty common in baseball. The one-run Rebel losses, though, are a bit more uncommon and improbable:

An 8-9 loss to Miami of Ohio. The Rebels gave up seven runs in the first three innings and had to rally the entire way to keep it close. After a big third inning and fourth, fifth, and seventh innings which all saw the Rebels score a run, the Rebels were down by a run and needed just two innings to get it. Four strikeouts, a single, and a GIDP later, the Rebels lost. After demonstrating significant offensive prowess for much of the game, the team went completely limp. This particular game, though, really isn't all that frustrating in retrospect. It's an outlier, for sure, but those do happen in this sport. It's also harder to argue that the Rebels "should" have won this game, considering the runs surrendered early on.
A 3-4 loss to Louisville which shares some similarities to the Miami of Ohio loss. The Cardinals scored three runs in the bottom of the first. The Rebels fought back and even came within one run in the top of the ninth. With the score at 3-4 and two men on with only one out, Senquez Golson flew out and Alex Yarbrough grounded out. Ballgame, Cardinals. Still, the Rebels were the away team in this contest, so it's really tough to gauge any sort of shortcomings regarding a failure to capitalize.
A 3-2 loss to Auburn, which really begins the trend of losing winnable games in late innings. Leading 2-1 headed into the ninth inning, the Rebels recorded two outs against Auburn and were just a few pitches away from winning. Mike Mayers had pitched the whole game pretty well up until that point, but began to unravel as soon as Auburn applied the pressure. A double led to another double, meaning an Auburn scored run, which would then lead to the substitution of Brett Huber. Huber gives up a single which scores Auburn's second run before retiring the final batter of the inning. Auburn mounted a two-run rally, to which we answered with a walk, a sac bunt, a strike out then a flyout. We had Auburn against the ropes, but they fought back and won, embarrassing us in the process.
A 3-2 loss to Alabama on a two-run walkoff in the bottom of the ninth. Alabama is 7-20 in the SEC. Just think about it.
A 3-2 loss to Kentucky which I still maintain is wholly the fault of an umpire who called multiple Rebel runners out at home while giving Kentucky runners the luxury of a run. I know I may sound like I'm whining here (I am), but the Rebs got 14 hits and left 10 on base on the way to scoring two runs. TWO. That's nearly impossible. The Wildcats took advantage of this, scoring in the sixth and eighth innings to take the lead. The Rebels, in the top of the ninth, got two runners on base with one out, before a strikeout and a groundout to end the game.
A 4-3, 13 inning loss to LSU which was a loss that annoyed me enough to cause a bit of a Twitter shitstorm (a Twitstorm?) that lasted the rest of the weekend among myself and a handful of more, let's say, "devoted" Rebel baseball fans. Though, after you see exactly how this team managed to completely piss away this game, I believe that you too will find my assertion that this team is wholly incapable of winning a close, important game in late innings to be entirely true.

In this ballgame, LSU took the early 2-0 lead after third inning. Ole Miss would score one in the bottom of the sixth and two in the bottom of the seventh to pull ahead, 3-2. LSU would score one more run in the top of the eighth. No score in the bottom of the eighth or the top of the ninth meant that the Rebels would need but one run to win in the bottom of the ninth. They didn't get it. They got a flyout, a walk, and two more flyouts, so on to extra innings we went.

As the score suggests, LSU wouldn't score again until the 13th inning, and in the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th only totaled one man on base, so they were largely inept offensively in the late innings, meaning that I won't go into detail about their offense in favor of doing the same for ours.

In the 10th, the Rebels got a fly out, two singles, then two strikeouts, so that's two men LOB.

In the 11th, a strikeout, a single, a HBP, a flyout and a groundout, meaning two more LOB.

The 12th, a single, a sac bunt, a walk, a strikeout, and an intentional walk loaded the bases. Then a line out to the shortstop. The Rebels loaded the bases, but scored no runs, leaving three on base.

LSU would score their winning run in the top of the 13th. The Rebels would, in the bottom of the 13th, a flyout, a walk, a strikeout, and then a final flyout would mean one more man left on base.
Add that up, and you'll see that in the innings where Ole Miss needed just one run to walk off with a win, they left eight men on base. On multiple occasions, they threatened to score and didn't, right after their pitching and defense shut down an otherwise capable LSU offense.

Repeatedly, this team has failed to come through under pressure. Last night's game, in a way, serves as a microcosm of this entire season - we're talented enough to win, but somehow are not capable of doing so in the clutch.

Don't take this as a "oh boo hoo woe is us we lost to Awkansaw State" type of post, though last night's loss certainly was the impetus for this little exploration into our 2012 season. While last night's loss during a time when this team could use all the wins it can get to better its postseason positioning certainly was frustrating in a vacuum, it more serves as continuing evidence of this program's inability to capitalize when opportunities arise. To put it simply, this program does not possess a killer instinct, something which has been apparent for most of 2012 and most of the seasons preceding it.

What would College Football Relegation Look Like?

2012-05-16T15:29:59Z

What would College Football Relegation Look Like?

I am working on some baseball-related material right now, but until then please enjoy SB Nation's look at relegation of the EPL variety and how that would look in the realm of NCAA Division 1 football. To call this little endeavor "interesting" is quite an understatement.

Ole Miss Travels to Arkansas State for Baseball Tonight

2012-05-15T19:36:28Z

Ole Miss Travels to Arkansas State for Baseball Tonight

We haven't the time to give you a full preview, nor have we the time to lament the asinine idea of playing a Sun Belt program as the away team, so head on over to the Ole Miss sports mothership to get a preview of tonight's action. Freshman Josh Laxer will get the start tonight for the Rebels against Arky State's Cody Woodhouse.