Jared Redding
After falling one game shy of the College World Series last season, the Diamond Rebels are looking to pick up where they left off with new faces and new challenges ahead of them.
Ole Miss released the official Ole Miss Baseball schedule for the 2020 season featuring marquee home SEC series against Vanderbilt, Arkansas, LSU and Auburn. Among the opponents scheduled, 11 played in last year’s NCAA Tournament and five of those played in last year’s College World Series.
The Rebels will open the season against one of those teams that played in Omaha, the
Louisville Cardinals, for a three-game series on Feb. 14-16. The Rebels lost both games at Cardinal Stadium last year.
Ole Miss will host the Arkansas Razorbacks on March 27-29, looking to avenge last season’s NCAA Super Regional debacle. Two weeks later, the Rebels will travel to Starkville on April 9-11 to face Mississippi State to try and notch their first win over the Bulldogs since 2018.
That series is at the front of what could be a grueling stretch for the Rebels in the middle of a stacked SEC field. After that three-game contest with the Bulldogs, the Rebels will host Kumar Rocker and the Vanderbilt Commodores on April 17-19, then turn around to face the Bulldogs again in the annual Governor’s Cup at Trustmark Park in Pearl.
The Rebels then hit the road for back-to-back weekend series in Gainesville and Athens before the final two series of the year against Auburn and Alabama.
That gauntlet of opponents look rough for the Ole Miss baseball team, but the fact of the matter is that every weekend in SEC play is a fight.
The remaining SEC games include the conference opener against LSU on March 13-15 in Oxford, at Texas A&M on March 20-22 and against South Carolina on April 3-5.
The non-conference portion of the Rebels’ schedule features mostly familiar opponents.
The Rebels will face three midweek opponents twice each this season. Ole Miss will faceArkansas State in a home and road series starting on Feb. 18 in Oxford and May 12 in
Jonesboro, Arkansas. They’ll see Southern Miss twice, once at home on Feb. 25 and again on March 31 in Pearl, and host nearby Memphis on March 3 before traveling to Autozone Park in Memphis on March 24.
Ole Miss will have a weekend series at home against Xavier on Feb. 21-23 and take part in the Keith LeClair Classic on Feb. 28 and March 1. The tournament will be hosted by East Carolina, and High Point along with Indiana will take part. The Rebels will also host a weekend series against Princeton on March 6-8.
Preparations for the spring season will commence starting this month with intrasquad scrimmages throughout October and November. Head coach Mike Bianco and his team will have two exhibition games against Arkansas State on Oct. 12 and Memphis on Oct. 26 followed by the Pizza Bowl on Nov. 15.
