Ole Miss baseball started fall practice a couple of weeks later than usual, and Mike Bianco did not pretend there was a mystery in it.
We’re probably a couple weeks later for the obvious reason, waiting on the field to get finished.
Mike Bianco
That is the headline of the fall, and it is not a player. It is dirt.
⚾ The Oldest Surface In The League, Finally Replaced
Asked what led to the new sod, Bianco gave the kind of answer that explains an athletic department, not just a baseball field.
It was the oldest playing surface in the Southeastern Conference. By his account the field had not been redone since the park was built — 1988, with 1989 the first season. Two major renovations changed the shape of it. The fences came in in 2005. In 2009 the grandstands went up down the sides, which took out foul territory and, along with it, two giant culverts.
Nothing was ever done to the drainage system. Not in any of it.
And then Bianco said the honest part, which is why this took as long as it did:
Those are the things that move the needle probably the least. And it’s unfortunate, but it is what it is, right? When you’re running a budget in a department and it doesn’t generate revenue, it’s hard to — the optics when you’re sitting in the stand probably doesn’t look much different. And now you’re going to spend a lot of money to change the actual surface.
Mike Bianco
He credited Keith Carter and his staff for spending money on the one thing nobody in the seats will photograph. That is a more interesting sentence about college athletics in 2026 than most of what gets written about college athletics in 2026.
The players noticed the part of it they stand on. Hunter Elliott, asked whether the new grass changed anything:
I didn’t feel any different. The mound’s a little better. I will say that. I don’t know what it is, if they changed the dirt or what, but it definitely is better. But yeah, I try to stay off the grass. That means I’m having to do something defensively if I’m on the grass.
Hunter Elliott
🔄 Twenty-One And Twenty-One
Bianco and the staff counted it up, and he offered the number with the caveat that they might be off by one.
| New players | 21 |
| Returners | 21 |
| Turnover | Exactly 50 percent |
His read on it: “which is, as you guys know, probably more the norm now than ever before. So enough returners, enough leaders in the locker room.”
Brady Dallimore, the catcher who transferred in from TCU, described the same reality from inside it:
With the transfer portal era, I feel like a lot of teams are just going to have a lot of new guys. And so it really just depends on the leaders you have on the team already and the new guys that are willing to buy in.
Brady Dallimore
🙅 The Best Answer Of The Day Was A Refusal
Somebody asked Bianco about leadership — a layup question, the kind that produces a quotable nothing. He declined to take it.
It’s just way too early for that question. I mean, there’s no way to answer that. It’s not even a good question at break in December, just because you really find out about your leadership.
Mike Bianco
Then he explained why, and it is the best thing anybody said in any of the five press conferences.
Right now, he said, everybody is happy. They batted all 20 guys in the intrasquad. Every player plays, every parent sees their kid play, and everyone says the right things about togetherness.
It’s different on February 15th when half of them aren’t playing, of the position players, and more than half of the pitchers don’t get to pitch. That’s when you start to figure out what kind of team you really have, how selfless you really are.
Mike Bianco
And then the part that should stay with you:
You don’t recruit guys because they’re great leaders. You don’t know that until they show up. I don’t think anybody, even his freshman year or sophomore year, would have said Tim Elko is going to have a statue here.
Mike Bianco
👀 The Names
Charlie Foster was the one everybody brought up unprompted. Bianco said he is physically bigger and stronger than expected, has been lights out in live batting practice, and sat mid-to-upper 90s this past weekend with four or five pitches — “really three different breaking balls, to be honest” — and good command.
Elliott, asked who had impressed him, led with the same name. “He looks really mature out there, throws really hard, obviously.” He added Maverick Rizzi, Eli Pillsbury and Brent Stukes.
Winston Pennant had a weekend. Bianco was careful about the roller coaster of it — “we got to be careful” — then made the case anyway: a good first month in the cages, good live batting practice, and two throws in the intrasquad that should have been two outfield assists inside roughly two innings. “That doesn’t happen very often. So a really good athlete.”
Hayden Federico, now in year three, named the freshmen he likes: Pennant, and infielder Christian Doty — “a really good infielder, good bat.” Then he reached for the word he reaches for every year.
Caleb Koski and Blake Fields, along with a player like Dom Decker — I think we all have similar games. And when you have pieces like that, and then you add on a Judd Utenmark, a Will Furniss, a Trey Hausey, I think that’s a really dangerous lineup.
Hayden Federico
🤚 Eight Lefties, And Four Reporters Asking About It
By Bianco’s count there are eight left-handers on this roster, and by the time it got to him he was amused about it: “A lot of lefties this year. I’m the fourth person you’ve asked that.”
He is not sure it was by design, but he is not complaining:
We’ve been fortunate with left-handers. We haven’t had a ton of them, but the ones we’ve had have been really, really good. If you just wrote down, it didn’t matter right-handed or left-handed, the best pitchers in my tenure here, you’d be amazed at how many left-handers would be on that list.
Mike Bianco
Elliott, one of them, laughed about it too: “I was looking around. I was like, dang, we got seven, eight or something like that lefties. And I can’t remember a time where we’ve ever had that.”
🎯 Elliott Came Back, And He Is Not Assuming Anything
Hunter Elliott is back for one more. Asked what the weekend rotation looks like behind him, he refused the premise of the question.
My job is to go out there and compete every weekend and realize that my spot’s never safe. Just because I started for a couple Fridays and just because I’ve been here a few years means nothing. We got a ton of new guys coming in here looking to compete for that Friday job, so I gotta go out there and earn it.
Hunter Elliott
On what he wants to fix, he was specific and unflattering about himself. “I want to get ahead more. I want to throw a lot more strikes than I did last year. I walked entirely too many people, got behind in too many counts.”
And on last season, he did not reach for a silver lining:
I remember a little bit of a bitter taste. We had a team that could win it, that was really close, that really enjoyed being together. And we just kind of let Omaha slip away from us for whatever reason.
Hunter Elliott
Both he and Eli Pillsbury, the left-hander who transferred in from Jacksonville State, pointed at the same person for their development: pitching coach Joel. Elliott called him “a big mentor to me… not obviously baseball-wise” but in life advice. Pillsbury said Joel was a big part of why he picked Ole Miss, and that “he showed me things that I’ve never even really thought to work on.”
Pillsbury also offered the most honest small moment of the day. Asked whether he was working on the pickoff move Joel gave Elliott: “Yeah, absolutely. I threw one away actually at our first intersquad, so we’re still working on that.”
📋 Housekeeping
Judd Utenmark and Will Furniss are practice-only for now. Bianco said both have done everything with the team since the beginning of September, but neither will participate in Saturday’s outside competition.
Ole Miss opens against outside competition this weekend against Samford.
And a note on why this press conference happened when it did, straight from Bianco: they scheduled it to piggyback on football’s bye-weekend availability. “We thought we’d get a little more traction using football’s press conference.” He was right, and he said the quiet part about media cycles out loud, which is becoming a theme in this building.
🏁 The Line That Carries The Fall
Federico, asked how you use a season that ended short without letting it sit on you, handed over Bianco’s own phrase:
Coach Bianco always talks about, you know, there’s winners and there’s learners.
Hayden Federico
Then he put the record next to it. Ole Miss went 15-15 in the SEC last year. “It wasn’t like we were perfect, but we gutted it out and we came out on top after it.”
Twenty-one new, twenty-one back, eight lefties, a field that finally got fixed, and a coach who will not tell you who the leaders are until February. That is the fall.
Everything above is from the October 5 availability. Locked On Ole Miss will have more all week at olemisshub.com.