Will Ole Miss baseball win its NCAA Tournament regional? Here's our prediction
Ole Miss baseball will face No. 6 national seed Miami, Arizona and Canisius in the Coral Gables Regional of the 2022 NCAA baseball tournament beginning Friday.
The Rebels (32-22) head to Coral Gables as a No. 3 seed and as the last at-large bid in the field. They draw a Hurricanes squad (39-18) that won 20 ACC games, an Arizona team (37-23) that eliminated the Rebels in Super Regionals last year and a Canisius team (29-23) on a six-game winning streak in which it outscored its opponents 56-18.
Ole Miss opens against Arizona (6 p.m., ESPNU) in the double-elimination tournament. Depending on the path it takes, Ole Miss will need to win three or four games to advance to Super Regionals for the third straight season.
When Ole Miss has been hot this year, it's been one of the best teams in the country. Case in point, the Rebels went 5-2 against top-25 teams in the last two weeks of the regular season. But when things have gone bad, they've gone really bad, including three straight series lost in April to teams that missed the NCAA Tournament.
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Here are the Clarion Ledger's predictions for how Ole Miss will fare in the Coral Gables Regional.
Ole Miss baseball in the Coral Gables Regional prediction
Arizona's offense isn't as potent as it was last year, and the Wildcats won't have the home field advantage this time. If the Wildcats stick with regular Friday night starter TJ Nichols, they'll be throwing someone who has an 8.06 ERA since April 1 but also someone who shut down this Ole Miss lineup last year, allowing one run in 5 ⅓ innings with seven strikeouts.
With the way Rebels' ace Dylan DeLucia has pitched over the last two months, I'm picking Ole Miss to win its first game.
If Miami saves ace Carson Palmquist for Game 2, the Rebels will be in for a big challenge. Palmquist has 108 strikeouts and a 3.09 ERA across 78 ⅔ innings and led the Hurricanes to wins against Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Notre Dame and Florida State this season.
Combine Palmquist with the major power threats in the middle of Miami's lineup and likely All-American closer Andrew Walters, and the Hurricanes will be a tough team to beat. That's why I'm picking the Hurricanes to send the Rebels into the losers' bracket for a rematch with Arizona.
From here, it's a toss-up. Neither team is particularly deep on the mound. Give the slight edge to a more veteran Ole Miss team. But from here the point is almost moot because it'll take unprecedented performances from the back end of Ole Miss' pitching staff and bullpen to win three games in two days against Arizona and Miami.
Prediction: Ole Miss makes it to the regional final but runs out of reliable pitchers and Miami moves on to host Super Regionals.
Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Can Ole Miss baseball win NCAA Coral Gables Regional? Our prediction
