Unpacking Ole Miss baseball's series loss at Missouri and what it means for SEC Tournament

Ole Miss baseball catcher Calvin Harris cushioned the blow with a four-home run performance in a Game Three victory Saturday, but the Rebels' hopes of qualifying for the SEC Tournament took a hit as they dropped two out of three games at Missouri.

The Tigers (27-20, 7-17 SEC), tied with Ole Miss (25-23, 6-18) at the bottom of the SEC standings entering the series, came back from seven runs down to win the first game and run-ruled the Rebels in Game Two before Harris' sweet swings salvaged a win for Ole Miss on Saturday.

Instead of making up ground against an opponent that appeared beatable on paper, the Rebels made their task at the business end of the season more difficult. At the end of their game Saturday, they sat at the bottom of the SEC, trailing Missouri and Mississippi State by one game. Ole Miss would need to overtake both of those teams to qualify for the SEC Tournament at the end of the season, but the Rebels have now ceded the head-to-head tiebreaker in both of those matchups.

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Ole Miss bullpen suffers

The hope was, as the season progressed, Ole Miss would get some of its pitchers back healthy and reap the benefits in the bullpen. The season hasn't materialized that way, and the Rebels' relievers were again dreadful against the Tigers.

Ole Miss took a 9-2 lead into the sixth inning in the series opener before the bullpen implosion arrived.

Starter Xavier Rivas allowed two runs to kickstart the capitulation, then Riley Maddox surrendered four runs without recording an out, Mason Nichols gave up a run in 1⅔ innings of work and Jack Dougherty finished off the blown lead by allowing a game-winning two-run shot to Matt Garcia. The Tigers went on to win 11-9.

The Rebels' bullpen was similarly ineffective in the other two contests. Three Ole Miss relievers combined to allow five runs in 2.1 innings of work on Friday. Saturday, the bullpen gave up 10 runs in six innings of work.

Defensive issues arise

Coach Mike Bianco called the Bulldogs' performance "embarrassing" in a 13-3 loss in the opener that ended after seven innings due to the run rule.

A contributing factor to that assessment was the defense. That game was broken open in the fourth inning, when a pair of Ole Miss errors led to six unearned runs. Jacob Gonzalez started it when he fielded a double-play ball and unsuccessfully tried to glove-flip it to Peyton Chatagnier at second base, leaving Ole Miss without an out when the Rebels should've recorded two. Starting pitcher JT Quinn dug the hole deeper with a throwing error soon thereafter.

In total, Ole Miss committed six errors over the course of the series – amid several other defensive issues that the scorebook didn't account for. The Rebels hadn't made more than four errors in an SEC series this season coming into this week's action.

Harris ends the set on a high note

In desperate need of a win to remain in touching distance of the SEC Tournament, Calvin Harris delivered some Ole Miss history.

He slugged four home runs Saturday, becoming the first player in program history to accomplish the feat. He went deep in the third, fourth and sixth innings to place himself on the brink of history.

Harris grounded out to second base in the seventh, but his teammates earned him another trip to the plate in the ninth, when he drove a shot over the center field wall to put the finishing touches on a 20-14 Ole Miss victory.

Harris, who drilled three two-run shots and a grand slam, also tied a program record for the most RBIs in a single game (10), first set by Charlie Conerly in 1947.

David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Unpacking Ole Miss baseball's damaging series loss at Missouri