Weather wreaked havoc on plans to get the college baseball season started this weekend, but a few postponements and some chilly weather aside, most teams around the Southeastern Conference got all their scheduled games in.
With the first weekend series under their belts—Kentucky still has a makeup game scheduled for Monday before the entire docket is complete—here are a few observations:
Ole Miss Lived Up to its Preseason Billing
The Ole Miss Rebels were ranked in three of the four preseason baseball polls but showed they’ll be a force this year with a series sweep over the Texas Christian Horned Frogs.
TCU was ranked in the top 15 of every preseason poll; the highest was its No. 12 ranking from the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll. But Ole Miss blanked TCU in Game 1 and then won two consecutive 5-2 contests to complete the sweep.
Junior pitcher Bobby Wahl struck out eight and gave up just three hits in 6.1 innings of work in Game 1 and sophomore Austin Bousfield’s five hits propelled the Rebels. Bousfield was on base in all three games.
This series was one of two in the country that pitted two ranked teams. Ole Miss shined and got out to a quick start on the season.
The 4-0’s
Both the Auburn Tigers and the No. 5 Mississippi State Bulldogs got off to perfect 4-0 starts to the season last weekend.
Auburn’s four wins were by a combined 16 runs but were all of the come-from-behind fashion. Junior outfielder Ryan Tella hit safely in all four games and drove in a team-high six runs in four games against Maine.
Mississippi State gave up just three runs to Portland in the entire four-game series and scored 31 runs. Junior shortstop Adam Frazier went 8-for-16 and stole a base in the Bulldogs’ series sweep. Fourteen MSU pitchers combined for a 0.75 earned run average over the weekend.
The Rest
Alabama 3-0 series win over VMI
No. 10 LSU 3-0 series win over Maryland
No. 11 Kentucky 2-0 series win over South Carolina-Upstate (series concludes Monday)
No. 3 Arkansas 2-1 series win over Western Illinois
Texas A&M 2-1 series win over Illinois-Chicago
No. 2 Vanderbilt 2-1 series win over Long Beach State
No. 7 South Carolina 2-1 series win over Liberty
No. 17 Florida 2-1 series win over Duke
Georgia 1-2 series loss to Georgia Southern
Tennessee 1-3 series loss to UNLV
Missouri 0-3 series loss to No. 23 Southern Mississippi
