No. 9 Ole Miss takes first game against Tulane, 5-4

OXFORD, Miss. – Ole Miss defeated Tulane 5-4 in game one of the weekend series, but not until the Friday game was delayed in the fifth inning due to rain and moved to Saturday.

Ryan Rolison was spectacular, yet again, in his five innings on the mound Friday, earning his second win of the year. He struck out almost half of the batters he faced, racking up nine strikeouts against 20 batters, and only allowed one earned run on the day.

Ryan Olenek (Photo: Josh McCoy)

Ole Miss was behind, 1-0, early after a solo homer by Tulane, but the Rebels responded quickly. In the bottom of the first, Ryan Olenek scored after a Nick Fortes single. Thomas Dillard then grounded out, but that allowed Fortes to reach home and give Ole Miss a 2-1 lead.

When the game picked up on Saturday, Will Ethridge started on the mound for the Rebels. After throwing two complete innings, Ethridge was followed by Will Stokes.

The seventh was huge for Ole Miss: Cole Zabowski crushed a dinger, and, two batters later, Cooper Johnson did the same for his first home run of 2018. Ryan Olenek followed that up by hitting an RBI single that scored Grae Kessinger to make the score 5-1.

For a brief period in the eighth inning, things got a little shaky as Tulane was able to score three runs to cut the Rebel lead to just one. However, that’s as close as the Green Wave could come.

Most Ole Miss fans were probably not too nervous about losing the lead when they saw closer Dallas Woolfolk take over in the ninth. Woolfolk, widely regarded as one of the best closers in the SEC and the nation, was able to secure the game for the Rebels with just eight pitches, seven of those being strikes.

Game two begins at 2:15.