OMAHA, Neb. – The 2022 Men’s Colleges World Series meeting is in place when Ole Miss paid a 2: 0 win over SEC’s rival Arkansas for Wednesday night’s heartbreaking loss.
The rebels will face Oklahoma in the top three title race, which begins on ESPN on Saturday night at 7 p.m. ET.
Anyone who may have approached you in the middle of the season or even a month ago and said that Rebels is taking part in this championship lied. Then no one would have seen it come. At least no one but the team itself.
In the pre-season, in January, the first chief / team captain / Oxford, Mississippi People’s Hero Tim Elko said, “When we get to Omaha, we will be the champions of the country.” He doubled that prediction during the NCAA tournament. His team suddenly escaped to Omaha. Now they are two wins away to make Elko Joe Namath.
“The emotions are great. We are excited to be able to play the national championship,” said a 1-5 year old on Thursday. “That’s why we came back. We knew this team had potential and we obviously had a rough place in the middle. [of the season]. But we certainly knew we could be here. “
After the first eleven games of the eight-team MCWS featured nothing more than drama-free games, the final battle between Rebels and the Razorbacks was tense from first to last. For Mississippi, ace was scored by Ace Dylan DeLucia (8-2), who scored a full-time shot with seven strokes and only four hits.
Ole Miss was able to hit Arkansas starter and season-back Connor Noland (8-6) with just seven hits in eight rounds, but two hits, both heavy landers on the field, each in one run, and that was enough.
“I was in the tunnel and watching when I didn’t hit, and there was a feeling that Dylan was in trouble,” Noland recalled. “It means you have to step it up and we did it. It just didn’t go our way.”
“It’s one of the best throwing duel I’ve ever seen in Omaha, and I’ve been here for a while,” said Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn, making his ninth trip to Omaha as head coach and seventh time. Shavers. “What lasted the game, two hours and fifteen minutes? I like good baseball. Smart hitting, great shots, good defense. And it was good baseball.”
“I just stuck with it,” DeLucia said with a smile about the rare full game. “I kept seeing all those zeros on the table and thought, well, maybe I’ll finally end one!”
Ole Miss plays as good a baseball brand as anyone else, but after a promising pre-season, it took the team a year to finally realize its potential. They rose to No. 1 at the start of the college’s baseball season in 2022, but injuries and a series of losses led them to drop out of the top 25, at one point on a brutal 7-14 SEC conference record. He was then bounced back from the SEC after just one game, a 3: 1 opening loss to Vanderbilt.
The following week, when a group of 64 NCAA teams was announced, many of the athletics department did not even get to tune in to the broadcast because they assumed their team would not be playing. Instead, they were counted as the last four teams to enter.
From there, they posted an 8-1 post-season record, none at home in Oxford, and now they are playing for the first national baseball title in program history.
DeLucia was not even in the start rotation in the first half of the season. Now he is the ace who led his team to the title fight with the rest of the bull. Before this week, they had never won more than two games in the previous five games in one of the College World Series. Now they are 3-1 and on the big stage.
“I’m just proud. One of the challenges we talked about was not just to come here, but to win,” said the brilliant Mike Bianco after the victory. He has been at the helm of Ole Missi for his 22nd season and has appeared to be on the verge of dismissal more than a few times in recent years, including during this year’s mid-season fights.
Van Horn even hinted at this in his post-game press conference as sharks hovered around his longtime SEC West rival and friend. Bianco shrugged on Thursday, as he always has. “It shouldn’t be easy, right? And you have to be tough enough to handle it,” he said.
So far they have definitely been.
“Everything you want is a chance to play for the national championship,” Elko continued. “Now we have one.”
#MCWS #final #DeLucia #closes