As ugly as the end of the Hattiesburg Super Regional was to watch for the Southern Miss faithful, you have to tip your hat to Ole Miss, especially head coach Mike Bianco.
Prior to the weekend, the respect between Southern Miss coach Scott Berry and Bianco was and is easy to see. That was the same case last season at the Oxford Regional as the two coaches cracked jokes and were both adamant and proud about the quality of baseball that comes from Mississippi. Anyone could tell then as the same now that it was all genuine between them.
It made for quite a comical moment as Bianco was asked about Berry’s statement earlier in the week about how Ole Miss should have a statue made of the coach. All Bianco could do was laugh.
“Statue?” said Bianco, who was all smiles.
“Yep,” Berry replied. “Statue. I meant it.”
To me, Bianco’s class, as well as Berry’s, makes Ole Miss’ trip to Omaha even more admirable. That’s because the trend these days seems to be for coaches to be so intense that the intensity of winning supersedes the appreciation and respect for your opponent. A fine example that I’m referring to is Tennessee baseball – just go look up their antics from this past season to see what I’m talking about, but I digress.
I remember when the famous LSU coach Skip Bertmann, who is the epitome of the example of class in college, lost his final game to Tulane in the 2001 Super Regional. Bertmann went over to the Tulane team and gave the Green Wave team, who were making their first trip to Omaha, a speech as if it was his own team. For some reason, the way Bianco carried himself after defeating Southern Miss drew comparisons in my head.
I’m sure maybe some of the Ole Miss critics would have liked to see Bianco become that intense coach as his program struggled to break through to Omaha after coming up short for several seasons. The opinions began to be voiced even more as his Rebels were 7-14 and looked like they would miss the NCAA tournament. When asked after the Rebels punched their ticket to Omaha about the criticism his response was that the win was about the kids.
“It’s not about me, I mean that,” Bianco said. “I didn’t throw, catch or hit a ball out there. It’s about these guys.”
Sure he’s right – to a certain a degree – but I think how he handled the pressure is a prime example on how someone should deals with things when things get hard.
Bianco had said that he had Major League baseball player Chris Coglan, who won a world series with the Cubs in 2016, speak to his players.
“He challenged the guys not to listen to the noise,” Bianco said. “He said don’t you dare let what people are saying on social media take your mind off your goals. Your job is to win the national championship.”
From the way it seems, while the Rebels may have run with that as they turned the season around, I think its obvious that Bianco took that to heart more than his players, especially this year, with the constant criticism he endured.
“Maybe when you’re walking out to the mound and someone says ‘It’s too late, Bianco’ sometimes I hear that,” Bianco said. “It’s challenging for the players because their life is all about social media. I try to stay off of it. I’m on Twitter, but I only follow a few people. You learn in a hurry that if you don’t follow a lot of stuff, you don’t hear a lot of noise. If you don’t read past your tweets, you don’t see any of the comments. I learned a long time ago that you can’t live in that world. You know it’s out there. I can tell because my loved ones see it. They won’t say anything to me, but I can tell. I can see it in their faces. Me personally, I just try to stay away from it, and I think I do a good job.”
For me it’s easier to see why fans should want to see Ole Miss win it all. First because I think Mississippi should continue to strive and show that it’s the standard for college baseball. Secondly, I think you have to want to see Bianco succeed, and I think Berry summed it up best.
“Whenever (Bianco) decides it’s time to go, they ought to build a statue at that stadium for all he has achieved,” Berry said. “He’s one of the best around, and he always does it with class.
“I told Mike after the game there, I said ‘if it couldn’t have been us, I wanted it to be you.’ I think the world of him, have the upmost respect for how he runs his program and how his players act. So, congratulations to them. Mississippi is going to be represented, we knew that going into this, one way or the other. Certainly, we’re pulling for them to win the whole thing there.”
Andrew Abadie of Pine Belt Sports can be reached via email at andrew@pinebeltsports.com. Follow him on Twitter: @PineBeltSPORTS.
