Ole Miss defeated Georgia 5-4 in walk-off fashion Thursday to stay alive in the SEC Tournament.
The win, which came against the No. 4 RPI team, strengthens the Rebels’ resume in pursuit of a national seed in the NCAA tournament.
A bizarre throwing error by Parker Caracci allowed Georgia to tie the game and a home run by L.J. Talley put the Bulldogs ahead, but the Rebels got two runs on three hits off Aaron Schunk in the bottom of the 10th, the last by Tim Rowe, a surprise starter in right field.
“After the game I hugged him and said no matter the mistakes that you make our offense is coming after you. I told Parker that we had him,” said Thomas Dillard, whose RBI double in the 10th drove in Nick Fortes to tie the game at 4.
Ole Miss (43-15) faces Auburn today at 3 p.m.
Rowe was rushed into the lineup after third baseman Tyler Keenan sustained a wrist injury in batting practice. X-rays showed no broken bones, and the move to hold out Keenan was called precautionary by Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco.
Ryan Olenek played third base, and Keenan’s availability for today is wait-and-see.
When Dillard touched home, the Ole Miss dugout emptied in celebration.
The reality is it’s all speculation until the NCAA hashes it out and makes decisions before all seeds are announced on Monday’s selection show at 11 a.m. on ESPNU. Regional hosts will be announced Sunday evening at approximately 7:30 on ESPN networks’ bottom line and by press release at NCAA.com.
The eight national seeds are guaranteed to play at home for the super regional — the best-of-three series that determines College World Series berths — provided they win their home regional.
Ole Miss has been a national seed just once in 2005 when Texas came to Oxford and won the super regional.
The question the committee must answer is if it’s comfortable giving four national seeds to the SEC, which has the No. 1 RPI among conferences, or if it wants to go politically correct and spread the wealth.
RPI is a strong measure in this discussion but not the only measure.
At the beginning of the day Florida was ranked No. 1 in RPI, Arkansas No. 3, Georgia No. 4 and Ole Miss No. 10.
Arkansas and Georgia also began the day with far better strength-of-schedule rankings – No. 3 for Arkansas and No. 4 for Georgia, just like their RPI numbers – than Ole Miss which had an SOS of No. 40.
Those factors play in favor of Arkansas and Georgia.
Ole Miss has series wins against both of them, but both series were in Oxford. That’s one reason today’s game was important. Had Ole Miss lost it would have only been 2-2 against Georgia in the eyes of the committee, and one of Georgia’s wins would have been on the road at a neutral site, which are valued higher.
“I don’t think there’s a question that we’ve got four national seeds in this conference,” Georgia coach Scott Stricklin said.
Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco is confident that his team will be a national seed.
“I think we are, but I don’t get a vote. I say that a lot here at this press conference. You look at our resume there are a lot of really good points about why we should be, but the team we beat is a real good team as well. That’s the scary thing and what the committee’s going to have to decide … can you take more than a couple from our league? We all have good resumes.”
and why we should be that team,” he said.
