Ben’s Blog

Sorry for the huge gap between posts. I’m going to blame it on Luke again. Speaking of Luke, he’s doing great. He’ll be three months old tomorrow. He doesn’t hardly stop smiling these days. Yes, I have lots of pictures, but I haven’t gotten around to posting them anywhere yet. I’m working on it.

Cassie is feeling good too. She’ll be having surgery in Jackson next week. That should clear up the last of her childbirth-related issues. Luke will be staying with our parents in Belmont while we’re in Jackson.

We’re leaving for Belmont this afternoon as soon as I get off work to enjoy the long weekend. My parents haven’t seen Luke in over three weeks, so it should be fun. I plan on taking lots of pictures.

Tomorrow is Ole Miss’ first football game of the season against Memphis. There are a lot of question marks for the team this year (more than usual), so it should be interesting to see how things turn out. I don’t plan on making it to many games this year, but I will be watching with interest. Mississippi State lost 45-0 to LSU last night in their first game. No one expected them to win, but no expected 45-0 either. I guess that’s what seven turnovers will do to you.

More soon.

Ole Miss faced Vanderbilt in the semifinals of the SEC tournament on Saturday. Vanderbilt is ranked #1 in the country, but because they had lost a game in the tournament and we hadn’t, they had to beat us twice to advance to the tournament finals. We only had to win once to advance. They scored 8 runs in the first one and a third innings of the first game. They eventually won 13-1.

We led 3-2 for most of the second game. In the bottom of the ninth Vanderbilt scored a run to make it 3-3 and force extra innings. (The tying run actually scored on a foul sacrifice fly to left field. That brings up the question of whether the left fielder should have let the foul ball drop instead of catching it for the out. I say yes, but it’s a pretty unique situation.)

In the top of the 10th, Ole Miss scored two runs when the catcher threw the ball into left field during a pickoff attempt at third base. The pickoff attempt occurred after a failed suicide squeeze. Crazy stuff. We then scored another run to make it 6-3. That’s a pretty secure lead in most extra inning situations, but we somehow allowed Vandy to score four runs in the bottom of the inning to win the game.

Sunday afternoon Vanderbilt played Arkansas for the SEC tournament championship. Vandy won 7-4. They are the first regular season champion to win the tournament in 10 years.

The NCAA also announced regional sites for the NCAA tournament Sunday afternoon. Vanderbilt, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Ole Miss will be hosting 4 of the 16 regionals. Vanderbilt is hosting its first ever regional. (Wow. That just shows you how far they’ve come.) Ole Miss is hosting one for the fourth year in a row. Texas is the only other school in the country that can make that claim.

Ole Miss will be hosting Southern Mississippi, Troy, and Sam Houston State this weekend in their regional. In my opinion, Southern Miss is the only team that has a chance to beat us, though Troy might surprise us. We’ve split two games against Southern Miss this year. However, neither team was using their best pitchers, so it’s hard to tell much from that. Our first game will be against Sam Houston State on Friday night.

Ole Miss scored 5 runs in the first inning and another in the fourth to beat Tennessee 6-3 last night. All of Tennessee’s runs came on a three-run home run by Arencibia with two outs and two strikes in the 6th inning. Lance Lynn gave up 6 hits and 3 runs in 7 innings of work. He also had 10 strikeouts, which brings him up to 130 on the season. That once again gives him the single season team record that his teammate Will Kline had stolen from him the night before. Both Kline and Lynn should have another shot at the record in a regional. Kline is now seven strikeouts behind Lynn. Cody Satterwhite pitched two perfect innings of relief to get the save.

Saturday at 1pm Ole Miss will play the winner of tonight’s Vanderbilt/Tennessee game. (Most likely Vanderbilt.) If we win, we go to Sunday’s championship game. If we lose we’ll play the same team again Saturday night since we haven’t lost a game in the tournament yet. We should have an advantage over our semifinal opponent due to the fact that we’ve played fewer games than them and aren’t as deep into our pitching staff.

We would face Arkansas or South Carolina in the championship game. One would hope South Carolina could upset Arkansas in the semifinals or at least force a second game. That would give us a pitching advantage in the championship game.

Will Kline pitched a complete game last night as Ole Miss defeated MSU 3-1. State had some base runners, but stranded too many of them. Jordan Henry reached base for the 45th consecutive game.

Mississippi State will have to play a vengeful Vanderbilt today at 1pm. Vanderbilt’s ace, David Price, is pitching. I predict State loses.

Ole Miss will be playing Tennessee tonight at 8pm. Tennessee took a series from us earlier in the season, but most people will tell you we are the better team. Lance Lynn will be pitching, and we have a bunch of fresh relievers. It should be a good game. Once again, I will not be staying up for it. Last night’s game was supposed to start at 8pm too, but it didn’t start until after 9:30pm and didn’t wrap up until 12:40am this morning. (Yes, that means MSU has just over 12 hours between games.)

If Ole Miss wins tonight, they won’t have to play again until Saturday. If they lose, they’ll have to play the winner of the Vanderbilt/MSU game tomorrow. That’s all the more reason to win. (Tournament schedule)

We won the Saturday game 5-0 to win the Arkansas series. Unfortunately we needed to win all three games to take the division crown from them. Still, it’s always good to take a series from a top 10 team on the road. Bukvich started for the first time in a long time and gave us seven shutout innings.

Earlier in the week Jordan Henry was named SEC Freshman of the Year. Zack Cozart made First Team All-SEC. Jordan Henry, Lance Lynn, and Cody Satterwhite made the Second Team. I was surprised to see that Justin Henry made neither.

Ole Miss and Mississippi State are about to square off in Game 4 of the SEC Tournament. Game time is set for 9:30pm. I will not be staying up for the conclusion. Three games have already been played today, and the biggest surprise so far is that Tennessee knocked off Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is ranked #1 in the country and just finished sweeping Tennessee last weekend. The loser of the Ole Miss/MSU game has to play Vandy tomorrow. No one wants to play an angry, desperate Vanderbilt. Ole Miss won last year’s tournament by sweeping the field. They beat Vandy in the final game.

Ole Miss is fighting to host a regional. Some say we already have it in the bag. A good showing in the tournament would go a long way toward a case for a top 8 seed. Being a top 8 seed means you get to play at home in the second round of the tournament. The NCAA lists us as #14 in RPI, which is one of the measures they use to determine ranking for the NCAA tournament. Warrennolan.com, a web site that tracks college sports, lists us as having the toughest schedule in the country this year. It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out.

My baseball update is a little late this week. I’ll blame it on the lack of Internet at home.

We traveled to Kentucky last weekend for a three-game series. They are not that great of a team, but we let them take two of three games from us. Both Kline and Satterwhite had bad outings.

This weekend we are playing at Arkansas, the current SEC West leader and #9 in the country. We needed to win all three games and for Mississippi State to lose two of three to Alabama to win the SEC West. That’s a tall order, especially considering the way we’ve played lately and that we’re playing at Arkansas.

The first game was actually last night. It was a tight one, but we won 5-4. State also lost, so we were off to a good start. Tonight at was tied 1-1 going into the 10th inning. We scored two runs to go up 3-1. That’s about as close as you can get to a done deal in extra innings. We put in Cody Satterwhite, our normally very good stopper. In the top of the inning he walked four guys and allowed a double which put Arkansas up 4-3 and gave them the win. I honestly didn’t expect us to sweep, but that’s a depressing way to lose. We have a chance to win the series tomorrow.

Last night’s win clinched a spot in the SEC Tournament. We’ll be in the NCAA tournament for sure, but we’d like to host a regional for the fourth year in a row. That was nearly a given a couple of weeks ago, but it’s looking less certain at the moment.

“We should take two of three from Tennessee, with the possibility of a sweep.” That’s what I said last week about our chances against Tennessee. Well, I was wrong. That’s what should have happened, but we somehow managed to let them take the series from us. We led late in both of the losses, but we let them come back. We walked four batters in the bottom of the ninth Friday night to let them win 3-2. They came back in the 7th inning Saturday, and nearly came back yesterday afternoon.

Our problem seems to be inconsistent pitching. Both Kline and Satterwhite had issues this weekend. In the past they’ve been as reliable as anyone we’ve got. Also, while everyone plays a little better at home, we seem to play a lot better at home. That doesn’t bode well for the Arkansas series. We’d do good to take the series from them at home.

We are now third in the SEC West, behind Arkansas and State. We dropped 4, 5, and 6 spots in the three polls that have been updated today. We are now ranked as high as 18th.

We play Kentucky this weekend at home. They haven’t had a great season, but they have the same number of SEC wins as Tennessee, so I wouldn’t count them out. I’m going to try to make it to a game, as these are the last home games of the season unless we land a regional.

Ever notice my baseball updates are shorter when we lose? :)

Ole Miss took two of three games from Mississippi State this past weekend. They won the first game 17-7 and the second one 5-1.

The Sunday game was tied 1-1 going into the sixth inning. It was still tied 1-1 at the beginning of the 17th inning. (My readers who are not baseball fans should note that a normal college baseball game lasts 9 innings.) State finally pushed 3 runs across in the top of the 17th to win 4-1. Cody Satterwhite, our stopper, pitched nine scoreless innings, allowing only three hits. That’s nothing short of amazing.

Jordan Henry was named SEC Freshman of the Week for his performance last week. He batted .575 on the week and was just a home run short of a cycle Friday night. Shortstop Zack Cozart has been been named a semi-finalist for the Golden Spikes Award, college baseball’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy.

Vanderbilt and Arkansas are currently tied for the SEC lead. Ole Miss is third in the conference and second in the West. We still have series against Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas remaining. The series against Arkansas will be critical.

We had a good week in the polls. We jumped up 4, 5, 5, and 11 spots in the four major polls. Yes, I said 11 spots. That was Collegiate Baseball, the same poll that dropped us two spots after we took two from South Carolina, previously their number five team. We are now ranked 13th, 13th, 14th, and 19th.

Tomorrow night we play at Memphis, and this weekend we play Tennessee in Knoxville. We should take two of three from Tennessee, with the possibility of a sweep.

James was complaining that I haven’t been keeping everyone up to date on Ole Miss baseball, so I’ll fit this in while I have a chance.

Two weekends ago LSU won the series down in Baton Rouge. On paper, we should have won it, but baseball isn’t played on paper. Those two losses looked pretty ugly at the time, but since then LSU has taken a series from Mississippi State in Starkville. Apparently they are better than people were giving them credit for. Also, they had history on their side. Ole Miss has not won a series in Baton Rouge since 1982.

This past weekend we took two games from South Carolina. They were ranked in the top 5 in every poll. We had a chance for the sweep on Sunday, but South Carolina’s bats finally woke up. Lance Lynn was named SEC Pitcher of the Week for his performance on Saturday.

We went up a spot in all of the polls except for one. Collegiate Baseball actually dropped us two spots. Seriously? Someone takes a series from your number five team and you reward them by dropping them two spots?

We play Murray State tonight. Scott Bittle will be making his first career start. He hasn’t pitched well lately, so hopefully this will help get him back on track. We play Mississippi State in a three-game series this weekend in Oxford. State has been playing well this season, so it should be fun to watch. They won the Governor’s Cup game a couple of weeks ago, but we weren’t using our best pitchers. They are ranked near us in all the polls.

In other baseball news, freshman first baseman Andrew Clark was dismissed from the team last week for breaking team rules. Also, the bids for the baseball stadium expansion came in $6 million over budget. It looks like they’re going to have to scale it back some.

Yes, I do have a good excuse for not posting lately. I’ve been working on my thesis pretty much non-stop. That’s what happens when you procrastinate. I took off from work all day Thursday and half a day on Friday. I’ve got to have a final draft to my advisor by first thing in the morning so I’ll have time to make changes and get it to my committee by Wednesday night. I’ve already been dreaming about all the things I can do once I get done with this thesis. It’ll be nice.

FYI, we went to the doctor last Tuesday, and Luke is still doing great. Cassie’s co-workers threw her a shower at school a couple of weeks ago, and our church in Belmont is having one today. (I have to go pick her up this afternoon.) By the way, we are registered at Toys R Us/Babies R Us and Wal-Mart. I think the Wal-Mart registry is pretty limited at this point. People have been good to us.

Ole Miss baseball stunk it up last weekend by losing two games to LSU, but they are making up for it this weekend. They have already taken two games from South Carolina. South Carolina is ranked in the top 5 in all the polls. We get the chance for the sweep this afternoon. More on that tomorrow hopefully.