Ole Miss is going back to Omaha. The Rebels finished off a super-regional sweep of No. 4 national seed Auburn on Saturday, winning 5-3 at Plainsman Park to punch a ticket to the Men's College World Series — the program's first trip back since its 2022 national championship.
The series turned in the eighth. With the score tied, Will Furniss and Tristan Bissetta homered back-to-back to put Ole Miss ahead for good, and the bullpen closed out the 5-3 final. The Rebels (41-21) had taken Game 1 on Friday 6-4, behind two-run homers from Judd Utermark and Collin Reuter, and never needed a Game 3 against an Auburn club (42-22) that had won the SEC's respect all year.
They did it the hard way. Left off the 16-team national host list last month, Ole Miss went on the road and swept its way through — first the Lincoln Regional, then a best-of-three at Auburn, beating a 42-win team twice on its own field. For a program picked by no one to host, it is a long way back to the sport's biggest stage.
The Men's College World Series opens Friday, June 12 at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha. Ole Miss is one of eight teams left standing, chasing a second national title in five years. Mississippi State, the state's other SEC entrant, dropped its super-regional opener at Georgia 13-12 the same afternoon.
For north Mississippi, the pull is personal. Oxford sits an hour from a lot of the towns NMSN covers, and a Rebels run in Omaha is the kind of June baseball every kid in a summer league grows up dreaming about. The road to Omaha just got a Mississippi team on it. Here's how the weekend set up. Bracket and schedule at ncaa.com.
