The Season Starts Now: Diamond Rebs Host Gamecocks to Open Conference Play
OXFORD, Miss. – Wipe the slates clean. Reset the win-loss columns. It’s time for SEC baseball. Ole Miss welcomeS South Carolina to Swayze Field this weekend for the first conference series of the year. Both teams have made it through non-conference play relatively smoothly, and now it’s time to stare down the big guns and see who blinks first.
It’s Game(Cocks) Time
There’s no such thing as an easy series in SEC baseball, and South Carolina certainly upholds that standard. The Gamecocks enter the weekend at 14-3, with two of those three losses coming to No. 10 Clemson. USC has faced Ole Miss a total of 67 times, and they lead the all-time series against the Rebels 39-28. South Carolina took two of three in Columbia when the two teams last met in 2022.
The Rebels will face the most formidable pitching staff they’ve seen this season when the Gamecocks arrive. South Carolina is second in the SEC with an overall ERA of just 2.21, behind only Texas A&M at 2.01. The Gamecocks have just three pitchers on the entire staff with an ERA of 3.00 or higher. USC has announced Eli Jones for Friday and Dylan Eskew for Saturday, while Sunday’s hurler has yet to be decided.
Jones enters the weekend with an ERA of just 1.40 in 19.1 innings. He’s allowed 21 hits but only three runs, while striking out a whopping 17 and walking just two. Jones appeared in 23 games last season.
Eli ends his night on a great note!!
🖥️ SECN+#Gamecocks | #ForeverToThee pic.twitter.com/0cAsNHC0wb
— Gamecock Baseball (@GamecockBasebll) March 9, 2024
Saturday starter Dylan Eskew boasts a 2.89 ERA over 18.2 innings of work, allowing ten hits and six runs, striking out 15 while walking just six. While Ole Miss has made a living taking walks this season, with 140 free passes to this point, South Carolina has walked a total of just 52 so far, while striking out a massive 176. The Rebels will need extraordinary patience against this staff.
The offense for the Gamecocks has been strikingly similar to the Ole Miss offense. They hit .278 as a team, with 24 total home runs, 131 RBI’s, and 147 hits. But they do get on base frequently, led by Dylan Brewer, who is batting .415 entering the weekend. But the players to watch will be junior catcher Cole Messina and outfielder Ethan Petry. Both Messina and Petry were named to the 2024 Golden Spikes Award watch list, and both are living up to the hype. Messina leads the club in homers (7) and RBI’s (19), while Petry is right behind him with six bombs and 11 RBI’s.
TWO FOR MOOSE!! @cole_messina
🖥️ SECN+#Gamecocks | #ForeverToThee pic.twitter.com/8wkoO1ZhGM
— Gamecock Baseball (@GamecockBasebll) March 9, 2024
Number 6⃣ for @ethanpetry23!!
🖥️ SECN+#Gamecocks | #ForeverToThee pic.twitter.com/pnpszujlNc
— Gamecock Baseball (@GamecockBasebll) March 9, 2024
Missing bats, particularly the bats of these two, will be crucial for the Rebels to win this series.
About the Rebs…
Winning this series would be a tremendous start for the 2024 Diamond Rebels. They enter the weekend having won their last seven and are 13-5 overall.
The Rebels are hitting .279 as a team, holding a narrow edge over the .278 of the Gamecocks. They are led in average by Ethan Lege, who has improved tremendously from 2023, batting .379 overall with four homers and 21 RBI. Some of Lege’s biggest contributions have come with two outs, where he is hitting .458 with 11 RBI.
Scorched! Third homer in four games for @_ethanlege! 🔥
📺 SECN+ pic.twitter.com/DDdGIrhXrb
— Ole Miss Baseball (@OleMissBSB) March 10, 2024
Jackson Ross also continues to see the ball well at .375, and leads the SEC in walks with 24. But it’s Andrew Fischer who has been one of the heroes of late, continuing to come through with clutch hits for the Rebels.
GO-AHEAD TRIPLE BY FISCH!!!@sirfischer3 | ESPN+ pic.twitter.com/qVBGtibJke
— Ole Miss Baseball (@OleMissBSB) March 12, 2024
Fischer is the team leader in home runs with six, and his 20 RBI’s are behind just Lege and Ross, who are tied with 21. The Rebels have smacked 29 homers and 139 RBI’s to this point in the season, but most of their damage has been done with patient at-bats leading to a whopping 140 walks. This weekend, they will face a South Carolina pitching staff that has surrendered just 52 walks on the year, so the Rebels will have to be extremely disciplined at the plate. Ole Miss has done significant damage with two outs this year, hitting .268 and scoring 49 runs in those situations. They will need to continue to find ways to get those big two-out hits against this staff.
Ole Miss pitching has seen strong improvement as well, as the Rebels enter this series with a 3.79 ERA, nearly a full run better than this time last season. It’s been Grayson Saunier anchoring the starting rotation, as he has dropped his ERA from 5.74 to 2.55, while holding his opponents to a .190 average. Gunnar Dennis, Friday’s starter, is holding a 4.34 ERA with 22 strikeouts to nine walks, while Liam Doyle will earn his second start for the Rebels on Saturday, following an eight-strikeout performance in 3.1 innings last weekend in his first start.
While Ole Miss has taken 140 walks off opposing pitchers, South Carolina leads the SEC and the nation with 148, and the Gamecocks will force the Rebel hurlers to find the strike zone with every at-bat.
Series Specs
Friday’s contest is set for a 6:30 PM first pitch on the SEC Network+. The weather for Friday is looking a little dicey at the time of this writing, but the expectation is to play. Saturday’s 1:00 PM matchup will be the first nationally televised game of the year for the Rebs, airing on the SEC Network. Sunday will be back on the SEC Network+ at 1:30 PM.
As always, stay tuned to The Rebel Walk to stay up to date on all the action.
Austin Eldridge
Austin has more than ten years in sports media, including sports talk radio, play-by-play broadcasting and journalism. He has followed Ole Miss athletics for his entire life and has covered the Rebels and the rest of the SEC while working in the Memphis media market. Outside of sports media, Austin is a musician and outdoorsman. Before a serious accident forced him to be medically discharged, he was a multi-media journalist with the Mississippi National Guard.
