Ole Miss baseball will play in the Shriners Children's College Showdown at Globe Life Field from February 14 to February 16.
Arizona, Clemson, Lousiville, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, and Texas will feature in the first weekend, with two more weekends after with different teams.
Rebels head coach Mike Bianco spoke to the media at the Shriners availability. Here is everything he said.
Q: On Shriners Children's College Showdown
Bianco: We played back in '21 coming out of COVID and amazingly won three games against three really good teams. Probably when the people at Globe Life and Shriners asked us to be back in it, it sounded like a great until 2025 and you looked at the schedule and you play three top 25 teams. As coaches, we probably all have a bit of angst opening it up with this type of caliber weekend. On the road, I think we would all love to do two or three weeks into the season, but the truth of the matter is everybody is in the same boat. I know our guys are super excited. The tournament run so well, I don't know if there's a better one in the country. To play in this beautiful ballpark and it's received so well by the fans. I know our fans love to come to Arlington and come into that stadium. I just think it's a great venue for college baseball fans and all three games are packed. Our guys are excited enough to just be able to play in a big league ballpark on Opening Weekend.
Q: On facing Arizona opening day
Bianco: The history of Arizona and its tradition there and all the success that they had and national championships — I think instantly when you're playing them that's what you first see. I thought Chip (Hale) has done a terrific job, certainly after the job Jay (Johnson) had done there and Andy (Lopez) before him and others. I just know when you're playing Arizona that you're going to play one of the Blue Bloods of college baseball. Everybody's excited about it.
Q: On maintaining conference divisions
Bianco: It was unanimous for us to pick divisions just because I think optically, from a standpoint of fans with 16 teams in our league, you could have a really good year and be sixth or seventh in our league. I think it's great to always strive to win a trophy — and I get to win the SEC is terrific, but to win the West or to win the East I think is really cool. The ADs went more for the reasoning in football and some of the other sports, where in the format with two common opponents you'll be able to get to everybody's facility or campus within a four-year span and I thought that was important for fans and student athletes. I don't think it's awful, but I like the West and I thought it was a chance for us to even put the map a little bit better where the teams in the East would really be in the East — sometimes we don't have that say. I think the addition of the two teams, Oklahoma and Texas, just made us a lot better.
Q: On no captain(s)
Bianco: As long as I've been here, we've let the players choose a captain at the end of the fall. I felt this year the makeup of our roster — so many older guys, so many guys that have been here. I think one of the negatives of selecting a captain or co-captains is it keeps other guys, that could be leaders in certain moments, from showing that leadership. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to make sure that it was organic. We talk about leaders all the time and we've talked about it a lot over the last 12 months. We wanted as many leaders as possible.
Q: On early non-conference road trips with current roster
Bianco: I think the same. We got a lot of new faces. Even though it may be somebody that traveled from another school — it doesn't matter if you've been an experienced guy, you probably did it at another program. We have some returners as we talked about, but the other thing that's probably been as much as an education is Joel Mangrum and trying to figure out when he's going to have his meetings. Things he feels that are important and the itinerary. That's been a learning experience as well.