{"id":32313,"date":"2016-03-24T12:41:50","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T18:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=32313"},"modified":"2018-03-07T16:41:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T22:41:01","slug":"rebels-welcome-south-caroline-for-first-sec-home-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/rebels-welcome-south-caroline-for-first-sec-home-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebels Welcome South Carolina for First SEC Home Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ole Miss Baseball<\/strong> has opened up the season on a tear, jumping out to a 15-1 start and flying up the national polls. The Rebs\u2019 RPI sits at #3 in the country, and a sweep of Grambling State<\/strong> last week propelled the Rebs to #9 in D1 Baseball\u2019s national poll and #10 in Perfect Game\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"scfootball\"<\/a>After a road trip to Tennessee<\/strong> over Spring Break, the Rebels will return to Swayze Field<\/strong> to welcome South Carolina<\/strong> for the first SEC weekend series of 2016. The Gamecocks<\/strong> are perennial contenders on the diamond, and they appear no different this season.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sitting at 15-2, South Carolina boasts a record that admittedly benefits from a lack of stiff challenges. That will, of course, change with SEC play, but as of now, series wins over the likes of Penn State<\/strong> and Charleston Southern<\/strong> have done little to convince pollsters of the Gamecock\u2019s staying power (their only poll appearance is #16 in the D1 Baseball poll). The computers, however, disagree: South Carolina is just three spots behind the Rebs in RPI, at #6.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not to say that South Carolina isn\u2019t talented. A trio of Gamecocks\u2014OF Dom Thompson-Williams<\/strong>, 1B Alex Destino<\/strong>, and C John Jones<\/strong>\u2014are tied for second in the conference with four home runs apiece. They are equally dangerous on the mound: Starters Clarke Schmidt<\/strong> and Adam Hill<\/strong> are tied for first in the SEC (albeit with six other guys) with four wins and no losses between them. South Carolina struck out 17 batters in a 7-1 win against Wofford<\/strong> on March 8, one shy of their school record.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, Ole Miss has some firepower of its own this season. Brady Bramlett<\/strong> (who just struck out 11 of 19 batters in his start vs. Grambling State<\/strong>) and Wyatt Short<\/strong> are all-SEC-caliber pitchers. While we can feel sure that these two will be competitive against any rival they face this season, the South Carolina series will be a telling test for starting pitchers Sean Johnson<\/strong> and Chad Smith<\/strong>, who will look to silence the Gamecock bats and establish themselves as reliable options against SEC competition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Are top-tier programs\u2019 numbers inflated at the beginning of the year? Sure. We\u2019ve only just reached the spring equinox; there\u2019s a lot of baseball left to be played.<\/span><\/p>\n

But these are two programs that have proved, year-in and year-out, that they will be in the CWS conversation, and this coming weekend at Oxford-University Stadium will be the first of many SEC series that could pay big RPI dividends down the road.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ole Miss Baseball has opened up the season on a tear, jumping out to a 15-1 start and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251,"featured_media":32314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[8122,8119,88,5292,2765,4718,8121,8118,8117,8114,8120,642,7067,4,5029,577,2117,8116,8115,8123,6059],"class_list":["post-32313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-athletics","category-uncategorized","tag-adam-hill","tag-alex-destino","tag-baseball","tag-brady-bramlett","tag-chad-smith","tag-charleston-southern","tag-clarke-schmidt","tag-dom-thompson-williams","tag-game-cokcs","tag-grambling-state","tag-john-jones","tag-ms","tag-ole-miss","tag-oxford","tag-oxford-university-stadium","tag-penn-state","tag-sean-johnson","tag-south-caroline","tag-tennesse-swayze-field","tag-wofford","tag-wyatt-short"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/2016-03-16-southcarolina.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/251"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}