Mike Bianco to return as Ole Miss baseball coach

OXFORD — Mike Bianco — who has been the head baseball coach at Ole Miss for 24 seasons and led the Rebels to their first College World Series crown — will return in 2025, a source confirmed with the Daily Journal Thursday.

The Rebels finished the 2024 season 27-29 and missed the NCAA Tournament for the second-straight year. The last two seasons were the only losing seasons in Bianco’s tenure. Ole Miss won a combined 17 SEC games over the last two years and fell to Mississippi State on a walk-off home run in the first round of the SEC Tournament Tuesday. The Rebels lost six games in a row to end each of the last two seasons.

Bianco is one of 21 active coaches with 1,000-career victories, and his 906 wins at Ole Miss are the most in program history. He is the second-winningest coach in SEC history behind Mississippi State’s Ron Polk.

In nearly a quarter century as the Rebels’ head coach, Bianco has led Ole Miss to the NCAA Tournament 18 times, to eight Super Regionals and a pair of College World Series berths. He has won 30 games or more in 21 seasons and notched 40 or more wins on 10 occasions; Ole Miss had just one 40-win season in its program history prior to Bianco’s hiring. The Rebels have won the SEC Tournament twice in Bianco’s tenure and the conference regular-season title in 2009.

“I think the confidence (in turning things around) comes from, we’ve done this too long, we’ve had too much success,” Bianco said following the team’s SEC Tournament loss Tuesday night. “ … We don’t make it the last couple of years, but I think this year, we’re a couple wins away. And again, I don’t want to go through the RPI and strength of schedule and all those different things. We have to be better, and we will be. We’ve always responded, and we will again.”

Offense was a surprising sore spot for Ole Miss in 2024; The Rebels finished the regular season second-to-last in the SEC — and 199th nationally — in scoring at 6.2 runs per game and second-to-last in the conference with a .257 batting average (255th nationally). The Rebels were also second-worst in the SEC in total hits, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. The 6.2 runs per game are Ole Miss’ lowest output since 2017 (4.8), as is the .257 batting average.

The pitching struggled as well without ace Hunter Elliott and assumed weekend starter Xavier Rivas, who suffered an elbow injury before the season began. Rebels pitchers had a collective 5.95 ERA, the second year in a row Ole Miss had an ERA above 5.90 (6.40 in 2023). The 2023 and 2024 seasons were the only seasons under Bianco where the team’s collective ERA was five or worse. Ole Miss was swept in three SEC series this year and run-ruled in five games. The defense was also up and down, as the Rebels’ .966 fielding percentage was worst in the SEC and 215th nationally. It was the program’s worst fielding percentage since 2008.

After winning the national title in 2022, Ole Miss suffered its first losing season under Bianco in 2023 and missed the SEC Tournament entirely. Ole Miss reloaded in the transfer portal for the 2024 season but was unable to find consistency for much of the year, though series wins against Auburn and a top-five Texas A&M team late in the season put the Rebels in position for a late push.

But a series sweep at LSU to close the regular season kept the Rebels from the 13-win threshold in SEC play, which was largely viewed to be the magic number to reach the NCAA Tournament. The Rebels made it to the SEC Tournament as the No. 12 seed but lost to No. 5 seed Mississippi State on a Connor Hujsak walk-off home run with two outs in the ninth inning.

Following the loss, Bianco was asked if he expected to be the Rebels’ head coach in 2025.

“You’ll have to ask my boss that,” Bianco said. “But I expect to be back.”

Ole Miss made it to four Super Regionals in five years from 2005-09 under Bianco. After a four-season drought from the NCAA Tournament’s second round, the Rebels made it back to a Super Regional and broke through to their first College World Series appearance under Bianco in 2014 before being eliminated by Virginia. Another four seasons ensued without a Super Regional appearance before Ole Miss made it back in 2019. The Rebels ultimately fell to Arkansas in three games.

Ole Miss finished the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season on a 16-game winning streak, leading to high expectations for 2021. The Rebels came up just short of making their first College World Series berth since 2014, losing to Arizona in the Super Regional in three games.

Many of the key players from the 2021 team returned in 2022, however, and Ole Miss was a top-five team in preseason polls and reached No. 1 in the rankings partway through the season. But a 7-14 start in SEC play put Ole Miss’ NCAA Tournament hopes on life support. The Rebels rallied late and finished 7-2 in conference play — including a three-game sweep at LSU — squeaking into the tournament as the last team in the field.

The Rebs, as captain Tim Elko said prophetically, got hot.

Behind a pitching staff that finished with the No. 23 ERA nationally and clutch hitting from veterans up and down the lineup, the Rebels proceeded to dominate the postseason, finishing 10-1, including sweeps in the Coral Gables Regional and the Hattiesburg Super Regional to reach the College World Series. On the shoulders of College World Series MVP Dylan DeLucia and Elko, among others, the Rebels advanced to the championship series against Oklahoma and swept the Sooners in two games to win the program’s first national title. Bianco was named the National Coach of the Year in 2022 by D1Baseball, USA Baseball, ABCA and Collegiate Baseball.

Ole Miss pitching has had an ERA ranking in the top-50 nationally 12 times since 2003, including eight instances ranking 25th or better. The Rebels ranked in the top-50 in scoring seven times over that span and were 25th or better twice.

Swayze Field’s capacity at its dedication in April of 1989 was 2,967. It now boasts a capacity of 11,477 and ranked fourth nationally in total attendance last season at 323,047, an average of 10,095 per game. Ole Miss has had 130 players selected in the MLB Draft under Bianco, including six in the first round: Chris Coghlan, Lance Lynn, Drew Pomeranz, Ryan Rolison, Gunnar Hogland and Jacob Gonzalez. Ole Miss has eight first-round draft picks in program history overall.

“That’s why Coach B has made this program the way it is. … We wouldn’t even have fans to be mad about us losing if he didn’t turn it around. He’s done it before, he has a track record of doing it,” sophomore first baseman Will Furniss said when asked about the team bouncing back. “… Everybody wants to come to Ole Miss. They want to come to the SEC. Yeah, we were bad this year. But that doesn’t change people … wanting to come to Ole Miss. Everybody wants to come to Ole Miss. They love Oxford, they love our fans. Our fans, they’ll be back next year, even though we had a bad year, with hope. That’s all it takes, is hope.”