The University of Mississippi Athletics
Grove-Side Q&A: Mike Bianco
3/3/2008 | Baseball
This installment of Grove-Side Q&As features Ole Miss head baseball coach Mike Bianco. Questions were sent in by fans through OleMissSports.com in recent weeks and touch on a variety of topics. Grove-Side Q&As are a regular feature on OleMissSports.com and provide Rebel fans interactive opportunites with some of the key figures in Ole Miss athletics. Q: Honestly, how far do you think the Rebels will go in postseason this season? A: I think we have as much talent as we have ever had here, and I felt the teams the last three years had the ability to compete for a national championship. Certainly there are some intangibles that have to happen for us, but talent wise, I see no reason why this team couldn’t get to Q: How would you describe the approach you want your players to take at the plate? A: It depends on the player. There are certain players where bunting and taking pitches are a part of their game. Someone like Jordan Henry usually will take a few more pitches if he is trying to get on base. He and guys like Hubbard have the ability to run, and therefore may try to bunt a few more times than some of the others. With guys in the middle like Overbeck, Guerrero and Power, you want them to be aggressive. When they get their pitch, you want them to swing sometimes, because the first pitch may be the best pitch. Q: Will the current construction at Oxford-University Stadium/Swayze Field hurt our chances of hosting a Regional or perhaps even Super Regional this year? A: Absolutely not. That is probably the most asked question to this point, and the answer is no. The reason is the NCAA doesn’t look at that. First, you have to earn that on the field. We have to do our part as a team and win enough games to be worthy to be a host site for a Regional or a Super Regional. Secondly, it has to do with the bid process. Lynnette Johnson, our tournament director, has done such a great job with putting the Regional together, and for her, putting the bid together may be a little different with the construction. I don’t know if we will be able to fit as much, because we usually have so many general admission seats sold to people sitting on the third base hill. But as far as that being a reason, we’ll still be able to hold more people than most schools in the country. Q: How do you plan your recruiting based around your current players possibly being drafted? A: That is how we plan our recruiting. We look at the seniors a few years out and what players that we’ll lose to graduation and who we’ll lose via the baseball draft. It’s always a guessing game but one we have always done pretty well with. We expect to lose upwards of 10 to 12 guys off this team. Q: Where do you see A: Q: How long do you think you will coach at Ole Miss? A: As long as they will have me. Q: How do you make the team focus on winning and accomplishing its goals when there are so many high expectations for this year's team? A: A lot has been said this year about the rankings and the expectations of the fans. The truth is that we have always had expectations within the program, and when we talk about goals, we have never had a goal to be ranked high or ranked No. 1 by mid-March. The goals are more team-oriented and more long term. We want to win 40 regular-season games. We want to win the SEC Championship. We want to host a Regional, host a Super Regional and win the National Championship. Those are the six goals and so all the rankings and publicity that goes along with that are nice, but they have nothing to do with our goals. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t mean anything. To be ranked currently second, I think it means that somebody thinks you are the second-best team in the country this week. But we have never had a goal to be the second-best team in the first week of March. Q: How hard is it to field a winner each year when you don't have the same amount of resources (facilities, scholarships, etc.) as other sports do at Ole Miss? A: That’s not really true. I think we have the best facilities in the country, and I think we are very fortunate to have an administration that cares a lot about baseball and provides us with everything that we need to compete at the highest level. As far as the scholarships, our scholarships are dictated by the NCAA rules, so we have just as many scholarships as other division 1 teams in the country. Q: What are your thoughts on playing A: I think it’s fine. My personal opinion is it’s an SEC weekend and should be thrown into the computer like the rest of them. I think it is unfair to have to play that series the final weekend, unless that’s how it fell with the computer. When you are not only conference rivals but in-state arch rivals and have to play at the end of the season when there is so much media and hoopla, it really puts us, and others such as the Q: I am a high school baseball coach, and our guys have confidence issues when we are not successful early in the game at the plate. Do you have any suggestions? A: One of the things that we talk about, especially at the beginning of the year, is to be aggressive. Evaluate the offense and your success differently, so kids can be rewarded. In our game, if you get a base hit, you’re successful, and if you don’t get a base hit, you’re not. Now we are judging them on quality at-bats. A kid made be out but saw more than seven pitches. That is going to help your team. You have to explain it to them as to why that will help them the more pitches they see. Even though you may not be hitting that pitcher, each hitter saw seven pitches, and at 21 pitches per inning, the pitcher is at 100 by the fifth. He will be out of the game. The point is quality at-bats are not necessarily based how many hits or runs you score.
