Following Friday night’s win over Arizona, Coach Bianco and the Ole Miss Rebels will face conference foe the 18th-ranked Texas Longhorns in an odd non-conference game for the second game of three as part of the 2025 Shriners Children’s College Showdown at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

Through three and a half innings, the Rebels and Longhorns remained deadlocked at zero runs behind impressive pitching from both starting pitchers for the Longhorns and Rebels.

For Ole Miss, Riley Maddox got the start for the Rebels on Saturday night. Maddox gave Ole Miss 3.1 innings before being pulled from the lineup due to Texas gaining a lot of momentum with seven hits and giving up six runs. However, in fairness, Maddox retired six Texas batters with strikeouts. Sam Tookoian came in to pitch in the 4th, but it was a quick stint as he walked three Texas batters and gave up another run. Coach Bianco would again go to the bullpen, bringing in Walker Hooks to settle down the Longhorn’s momentum that came with a 7-run 4th inning. Landon Waters and Gunnar Dennis would also get their shot on the mound before a walk-off 10th run was scored in the bottom of the 7th by the Longhorns.

Ole Miss would finish the night with just two hits.

The 7-run 4th inning proved to be too much for the Ole Miss Rebels on Saturday night as they failed to score any runs, dropping the first game of the season. Texas would add two insurance runs in the bottom half of the 7th run off the bat of Max Belyeu. Ethan Mendoza would knock in the walk-off 10th run in the bottom of the 7th to give the Longhorns a 10-0 run win over Ole Miss.

As brutal of a loss as it was, Coach Bianco learned a lot about where his team in comparison to the upper teams of the Southeastern Conference this season. That said, it’s only game two, and there’s still a lot of upside potential for the 2025 Ole Miss Baseball team. We’ll see some lineup tweaking, maybe even a different weekend rotation, but a loss this early in the season happens. Ole Miss will be fine; a loss like this builds character to reach its full potential.

Ole Miss will return to action on Sunday afternoon with a final game at Globe Life Stadium against the 15th-ranked Clemson Tigers.

Photo Credits – Ole Miss Baseball on X