BLOG: After a one-year hiatus, the Diamond Rebels are back in the NCAA Tournament.
As was announced during today’s Road to Omaha selection show on ESPNU, Ole Miss is a No. 3 seed in the College Station Regional along with four-seed Dayton, two-seed Texas Christian University and the top-seeded Texas A&M Aggies.
The Aggies make the tournament for a school-record sixth straight season and will host a regional for the ninth time at Blue Bell Park.
As a team, the Aggies are hitting .292 with a staff ERA of 2.86 (good enough for fifth-best in the NCAA).
The Horned Frogs (36-19) will be a familiar foe for Ole Miss after the two schools split a rain-shortened two-game series in Fort Worth, Texas, to open the year.
After getting off to a slow start compared to pre-season expectations, TCU flipped a switch and won 22 of 28 to close out the season, including a 1-2 showing in the Mountain West Tournament.
TCU is hitting .268 as a team with a 3.17 staff ERA (good enough for sixth-best in the NCAA).
Dayton (31-28) will make its first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament after winning the Atlantic 10 Championship.
The Flyers, with an RPI of 183, won nine of their last 10 games of the season to earn their first post-season bid.
As a team, Dayton hit .292 with a 4.77 staff ERA.
While those numbers don’t jump out at you, the Flyers do lead the nation in stolen bases.
YOU AGAIN? The 2012 tournament will mark the second time the Rebels have traveled to College Station.
In the 1999 College Station Regional, third-seeded Ole Miss lost to second-seeded Long Beach State 4-3, beat Monmouth 12-3 but lost later in the day to the top-seeded Aggies 13-7 to end its season.
———SCHEDULE———
Friday (June 1)
Game #1 – No. 3 seed Ole Miss vs No. 2 seed TCU (12:35 p.m.)
Game #2 – No. 4 seed Dayton vs No. 1 seed Texas A&M (6:35 p.m.)
Saturday (June 2)
Game #3 – Game #1 Loser vs Game #2 Loser (12:35 p.m.)
Game #4 – Game #1 Winner vs Game #2 Winner (6:35 p.m.)
Sunday (June 3)
Game #5 – Game #3 Winner vs Game #4 Loser (12:35 p.m.)
Game #6 – Regional Championship Game – Game #4 Winner vs Game #5 Winner (6:35 p.m.)
Monday (June 4)
Game #7 – *Second Regional Championship Game – Game #4 Winner vs Game #5 Winner (6:35 p.m.)
* – if necessary
———TICKET INFORMATION———
FROM TEXAS A&M’S WEBSITE: very limited quantity of all session reserved tickets remain for the College Station Regional. They are available online only at tickets.12thmanfoundation.com. The remaining tickets are located in the upper level and are $60 each for all session tickets.
If tickets remain on Tuesday, May 29, they will also be available beginning at 8 a.m. over the phone on the AT&T Ticket Hotline 888-99-AGGIE and in person at the 12th Man Foundation Ticket Center’s Kyle Field location. 15 minute parking is available in Lot 62 on the west side of Kyle Field. The ticket office is closed on Monday, May 28, in observance of Memorial Day.
Season ticket holders who responded to the postseason ticket application before the deadline were shipped their regional tickets on or before May 24. Other individuals who purchased all session tickets last week and requesting mail delivery were shipped their tickets last week as well. Orders designated for Will Call, may be claimed at the 12th Man Foundation Ticket Center’s Kyle Field location during regular business hours or at the event.
Individual game tickets for the Regional will go on sale Friday, June 1st. Sales times and specific information will be released once the game times are announced.
———WHAT THEY SAID———
“I don’t know enough about the other three teams yet to make a pitching decision. Part of me says you go with your best… I don’t know how big of an option it is. It’s going to be small. I have a hard time not rolling your guys out there. Hopefully when you get to games three and four your three and four are better than the other team’s three and four… I don’t know if I’m giving it any more consideration than i did the last five years.”—Texas A&M head coach Rob Childress on the possibility of not throwing ace Michael Wacha in Game 1 against Dayton
“Those two teams, (with) their postseason experience they’re not going to be intimidated coming here and playing at Olsen Field, especially Ole Miss coming out of the SEC and playing in the big stadiums they have there.”—Texas A&M pitcher Rob Stripling on the College Station Regional.
“I think we were all pretty confident that we were in. It was good to get that last win versus Arkansas in the SEC Tournament, but we didn’t have too much doubt in our minds that we were in. They were talking on the show that we were one of the last five in but we felt confident the whole time that we were going to get in and it was good to see our names flash up on the screen.” — Ole Miss junior second baseman Alex Yarbrough.
(May 28, 2012)
