In a winner-take-all championship game, the Ole Miss Rebels would welcome the Murray State Racers back to Swayze Field for all the marbles. The winner would advance to play Duke in the Super Regional this coming weekend.

For the Rebels, the fear of repeating history from the 2018 Oxford Regional, where Ole Miss allowed an explosive Tennessee Tech team to come into Swayze Field and take the Oxford Regional from the Rebels to advance to the Super Regional. Similar to what was at stake on Monday night of the 2025 Oxford Regional, Murray State shell-shocked the Rebels on Friday night. Ole Miss got right on Sunday to force the deciding game seven on Monday night, but it was the Racers who seemed to want it more.

Both teams were lacking in pitching depth due to the grind of the Oxford Regional, where runs came in by the dozens from all four teams. Ole Miss went with Walker Hooks to start, while the Racers went with Isaac Silva to start. With the Murray State bats popping, Hooks lasted only 2.1 innings, giving up eight hits, five runs, and only two strikeouts.

Murray State jumped out to an early 5-1 lead over Ole Miss through three innings of play on Monday night. Murray State would add seven more runs to the lead to make it 12-3 heading to the bottom half of the 7th inning. Ole Miss would put together a bit of late-inning magic. Still, it was boys from Murray, Kentucky, who would piece together just enough to escape the Oxford Regional with their first-ever trip to the Super Regional.

Credit to Murray State, they came into the Oxford Regional and fully embraced the underdog role, turning from Cinderella to the villain overnight as they knocked off Georgia Tech and Ole Miss twice to reach the Super Regional.

For Ole Miss, the Rebels are once again on the wrong side of history. What they did in Hoover might have been fun, but once again, the Rebels got an early exit in the NCAA Tournament from a mid-major program that came in and never backed down from the Ole Miss brand. As the Rebels face the reality of another early exit, conversations in Oxford continue to grow, with signs of unhappiness and discontent towards the current trajectory of the program. Since winning the National Championship in 2022, the Ole Miss baseball program has stagnated, lacking the qualities that make the program so special. There will be conversations about change by some. Still, Coach Bianco has been here before, and the Rebels responded by winning a National Championship, learning from it, and then “shower well,” as Coach Bianco famously says. Baseball happened, but the 2025 Ole Miss season is far from a wash. There were memorable moments and memories made along the way this season. However, for a team that was picked second to last in the preseason Southeastern Conference polls, the Rebels overachieved in many ways this season. The sting of losing at home to end the season will disappear with time; after all, that’s baseball.