Rebels win midweek contest against Murray State

The Ole Miss Baseball team snapped its four-game losing skid with an 8-2 win over Murray State to improve their record to 20-12 on the year.

Kids cheer during an Ole Miss baseball game against Murray State on April 12, 2022. Photo courtesy: Reed Jones/Ole Miss Athletics.

Losing would have been… quite bad.

With the Rebels needing an impressive run in the second half of the SEC schedule to make the NCAA tournament, losing a midweek game to a team that is 1-8 in the OVC would have been detrimental to the team’s mentality. A loss would have brought an already bad RPI down even lower. It’s Murray State, so I don’t have much to take away from beating a team like that, but the Rebels didn’t lose the game that would have made whatever is happening with this season even worse, so good job I guess.

Hope the kids had fun!

This game was the annual kids’ day game for Ole Miss. Every year, several elementary schools take a field trip to watch Ole Miss play baseball at 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday against a really bad team. It’s a fun day for the kids to get to go watch a baseball game and they usually get to see a blowout. At least there were plenty of kids watching Ole Miss play as I doubt many Rebel fans tuned in for this one. The fact that I’m talking about elementary school field trips right now should tell you all you need to know about how important/exciting this game was. There was an exciting streak in the bottom of the sixth inning where the Rebels scored five runs on five hits, but against Murray State, that is to be expected.

Max Cioffi! The Chicago man is back!

Max Cioffi pitches against Murray State on April 12, 2022 for the first time after having Tommy John surgery in 2021. Photo courtesy: Reed Jones/Ole Miss Athletics.

Rebel pitcher Max Cioffi made his first appearance of the season just a few days shy of one year since he had season-ending Tommy John surgery. Cioffi joined the Rebels in 2018 and helped the Rebels staff in 2018 and 2019, but he hasn’t really had a chance to play baseball since then. With the Rebels’ underwhelming pitching staff being one of the team’s biggest problems right now, the hope is Cioffi can come back strong and add a good arm to this roster. That may be being too hopeful as Cioffi pitched for the first time in over a year, but if nothing else, I’m really happy to see Cioffi get an opportunity to play after much of his college baseball career was taken away from him.