Dillon CaderThe Ole Miss baseball team bounced back from their first loss of the season and dominated UCF by a score of 9-1 to take the series and improve to 10-1 on the season. The Rebel pitching staff capped off its impressive weekend with a dominating performance and the offense looked like itself again after being held scoreless in game two.
The bullpen looks DEEP
The Ole Miss bullpen only gave up only two runs the entire weekend, and its best pitcher, Jack Dougherty, didn’t even make an appearance. Ole Miss brought in seven different pitchers, and all of them looked more than capable of competing at the SEC level. When you include Jack Dougherty and Wes Burton, who didn’t pitch in this series, Ole Miss has nine guys who it can feel confident about bringing in from the pen. If the production from everyone continues, that will be a massive upside for this team, especially when you consider that the starting pitching is going through its struggles. This deep of a bullpen gives the Rebels a ton of options to work with in the bullpen and in the starting rotation, which is likely to get moved around after the latest performances.
This is a really good win
If you were wondering why Ole Miss seemed to not play as well as they have been this weekend, the answer is that UCF has a very good baseball team that will win a lot of games this season. The Knights showed they have some real arms on their roster and can hit efficiently as well. This Ole Miss baseball team is legit, and I think UCF taking a game from the Rebels says more about them as a team than it does about Ole Miss. The Rebels will be a great team and one loss doesn’t change that, but for UCF it shows that they can compete with anyone in the country. With teams all around the country losing to inferior opponents, this win for Ole Miss is a big one, as it was able to come out of the weekend with a road series victory against a scrappy team that could possibly make its way into the Top 25 soon. If UCF continues to impress and has the season that they should, then this series win will become one that looks really good on Ole Miss’s resume in May.
Hello Hayden
In his third game back after missing time with a hamstring injury, Ole Miss catcher Hayden Dunhurst showed he is fully back and ready to go in his game three outing. He went 2 for 4 at the plate with a walk and three runs scored and looked more comfortable at the plate than he has so far this season. Dunhurst started out the season slow before his injury and hadn’t really settled in since returning. If he is back swinging it well, then that adds another threat to this offense, which is already one of the best in the country as it is.
