OMAHA, Neb. -- The Ole Miss Rebels are playing for the college baseball national championship.
The Rebels punched their ticket to the College World Series finals on Thursday with a 2-0 win over the Arkansas Razorbacks in the semifinals, sending the Razorbacks home with a masterful pitching performance from Dylan DeLucia. The Ole Miss righty threw a complete game shutout, allowing four hits and striking out seven.
Here's what Rebel head coach Mike Bianco, pitcher Dylan DeLucia, outfielder Kevin Graham and first baseman Tim Elko had to say after the game.
Mike Bianco
On game overview:
"Just wow. I mean, another really great baseball game, I thought, by both teams. Another great pitching performance by both clubs.
"I don't know how many times that happens where both clubs pitch it so well two days in a row. Both Connor and Dylan pitched today like Friday night aces in the Southeastern Conference and were terrific and really kind of matching each other pitch for pitch.
"They played great defense, like Arkansas can. There's a couple when hits are at a premium, some plays by Moore and others that shut down innings, Stovall and Wallace at third and some double plays they turned to kind of squelch out what rallies you had, rallies where if you had a guy on today.
"I thought it was a super game. We got a couple of huge hits by Kevin and Calvin Harris, the timely hit that we talk about so much. But the story of the day was Dylan, just legendary performance."
On emotions and playing for a national championship:
"Just proud. I think as we continue to win games and move forward, it was neat. A lot of people have the goal to be here, right? One of the challenges we talked about is to not just come here, but to win. This isn't a bowl where years from now people know if you went to a bowl, but they don't know if you won or lost. You went to the Gator Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, whatever.
"This is a tournament where it's like basketball, you're supposed to win and move on. Just proud that they continued to believe in one another. They've played well.
"Yesterday was tough. When I sat up here, you might have asked the question, I wasn't sure at the time, because you could see they were pretty down last night when we went out to left field. That's to be expected because it was bases loaded. I'm sure the players and the Ole Miss faithful in the stands and all the fans that we've had here were thinking some ball's going to squeak through an infielder hole and we were going to win a game, and we didn't.
"So to be able to bounce back and play like this today, another tough one. And that was one of the challenges we said this morning, that nobody said it was going to be easy. Right? It's not supposed to be easy. You've got to be tough enough to handle it. Maybe somebody asked, maybe some of that April toughened us, weathered us a little bit to be able to handle last night and be able to bounce back today."
Dylan DeLucia
On what was working for him on the mound:
"I thought I didn't really have command of my fastball that well until later on in the game, but I was commanding the slider so well, so we just stuck with it. Throwing it for first pitch strike, throwing it late in the count. But just attacked them, at the end of the day."
On finishing the complete game shutout:
"I just stayed with it. I just looked up and saw all those zeros going into the eighth, and I was just like, 'It's my time to finally finish this game.'"
On preparing to pitch on short rest:
"I just went out there, just kind of put as much zeros as I can. It was cool to have ace versus ace again. Noland's a great pitcher. Last time it was a dogfight. This time it was a dogfight. So it was just really cool to have that again."
On journey of the 2022 season:
"It's been interesting, a fun ride. Coach B always says enjoy the ride, and that's what we've been doing, and that's what I've been doing, just taking every chance I get, kind of running away with it. Just not looking back. But, I mean, this team has just played so well the last couple weeks, and we turned it on so far."
Tim Elko
On emotions with playing for a national championship in his senior year:
"I mean, the emotions are great. We're excited to get to play in the National Championship series. Like you said, this is why we came back. We knew that this team had the potential, and obviously we had a little bit of a rough patch there in the middle. Through and through, we always knew that, if we just kept believing and stuck together, we could be right here. Excited to get to play this weekend."
On confidence in Dylan DeLucia:
"Yeah, just so much confidence. As you can see, he can just put on quite the pitching performance, just gets the outs one after the other. So we have a lot of confidence playing behind him."
On pitching performance from Arkansas' Connor Noland:
"He had all of his pitches working. He had that curveball working, his cutter and would throw the fastball in there too to keep you off balance. Just hats off to him. He pitched really well. Kept us on our toes. We were just able to put enough of a couple innings together to get those big hits from Kevin and Calvin and score a couple of runs.
"He pitched really well, but at the end of the day, DeLucia just kept us in it the whole time and put up all those zeros. So just proud of how we all played."
Kevin Graham
On emotions with playing for a national championship in his senior year:
"Just so proud of everybody. Calvin, big day today. But all the guys. Fun group of guys to be around. I think that's one of the big reasons why we had the turnaround."
On confidence in Dylan DeLucia:
"Yeah, he makes it easy on us, keeps us in a rhythm. He's filling it up. That makes it a lot easier playing defense when you know he's going to be around the zone and keeping you in it."
On pitching performance from Arkansas' Connor Noland:
"Yeah, that was an incredible outing by Noland. He was really sharp, mixing it up with that fastball/cutter. Mixing in the big breaker, tunneling that thing well. Just one of those days you had to take care of your opportunities when you got them because there weren't going to be many of them."
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