Our second ranked Commodores team belted 7 home runs at Ole Miss last night and super soph Jack Leiter gave us 6 excellent innings in a 13-2 Dores victory over the Rebels before 10,267 fans at Swayze Field in Oxford.

Isaiah Thomas blasted 2 deep ones, his 10th and 11th of the season, both of the solo variety, and now has 27 Ribeyes on the season. Both of Isaiah’s homers were to left central field over the 365 sign. Carter Young hit his 14th, a solo blast, Dom Keegan blasted his 10th, Parker Noland hit his 7th, Spencer Jones hit his 2nd, and super soph Troy LaNeve, playing in left field, blasted his third. Isaiah and Troy lead the team with 3 hits apiece and Dom added 2 hits. Parker and Troy postd 3 Ribeyes apiece, and Dom, isaiah and Spence each had 2 Ribbies.

We ended up with 13 hits on the night in a super offensive performance late yesterday afternoon after a tough night at the plate Friday Night in a 3-1 loss in which Kumar pitched well enough to get the victory, but we just couldn’t get the bats going. Hopefully, last night is a harbinger for things to come today.

Our awesome sophomore right hander Jack Leiter, after getting a break from Corbs last week to recharge his batteries, pitched a beauty. Jack went 6, gave up 2 hits, 1 earned, with 3 walks and 13 K’s. Jack was awesome. Jack moved to 8-2 on the season, and now has 119 K’s on the season, just 1 ahead of Kumar for the national lead. Kind of a fun competition going on there. We need to help our man out on Fridays at the plate like we did our Saturday man.

We moved to 36-11 overall and 17-8 on the season. No.1 Arkansas lost to those Eastern guys, 8-7, and are now 18-8 in the conference and 38-10 overall. Those enemies from the East are 18-8 and 39-12. So we’re a 1/2 game back of them. We’ve played one less game as we were rained out against Alabama last Saturday. That game was canceled, so we’ll need to play good baseball to overtake those guys from the Eastern Bloc before the regular season ends. We’ll catch one of them today if we can be successful and one of them loses, preferably the guys from the East for eastern standings purposes.

But we’ve got a tough assignment today at 2 PM CT on the SEC Network. Freshman right hander Patrick Reilly, who pitched a phenomenal game for us last Saturday in a 6-2 victory over Alabama, will take the hill. Patrick gave us a super start against the Crimson Tide last week going 7, giving up 2 hits, 2 earned runs, with a pair of walks and 9 K’s. Hoping Pat can give us that today. Patrick will square off with Ole Miss right hander Drew McDaniel, who is 4-0 with a 4.50 ERA.

Important game today in the next to last SEC series of the season. We’ll play Florida International on Tuesday at 6:30 PM CT on SEC Network+, then host Kentucky for a Thursday-Saturday series with game times at 6:30 PM CT Thursday, 6:30 PM CT Friday and 2 PM CT on Saturday. All 3 games will be on SEC Network+.

So we need to get a good outing from Patrick today, play solid defense like we have all weekend, and hit it well. The long ball is huge, but we also need singles, doubles and a triple or 2. Loved what I saw last night. Tremendous challenge today. I believe we’ll be ready for it.

Men’s Golf

Our 13th ranked and SEC Championship Men’s Golf team hosts an NCAA Regional tomorrow through Wednesday at the Golf Club of Tennessee in Kingston Springs. We will host 12 other teams in the 13 team field. Kingston Springs is 26 miles west of Nashvegas.

We will be teeing off at 7:30 AM CT playing with No.1 seed Clemson and No.2 seed North Carolina State. Michael Sheers will be off in the first threesome at 7:30 AM, followed by Cole Sherwood at 7:41, then Matthew Riedel at 7:52, Reid Davenport at 8:03 and then the great William Moll at 8:14.

Some other big names in the field include Arkansas, Virginia and Houston. The top 5 teams after 54 holes of stroke play qualify for the NCAA Championships which will be played May 28th-June 2nd at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona. May 28th-May 30th. The first 3 days of the NCAA Championships are stroke play with the top 8 teams from the stroke play qualifying and playing 3 days of match play to determine the national champion. There are 6 regional sites in which the top 5 teams from each regional qualify for the NCAA Championship. There are 3, 13 team fields and 3, 14 team fields.

In some more super news, our amazing coach, Scott Limbaugh, was named SEC Coach of the Year. In my opinion, they’ll need to retire that trophy in Coach Limbaugh’s name in his long illustrious career at VU forthcoming. Just one fine coach. Our great sophomore William Moll was named first team All-SEC, and talented freshman Cole Sherwood was named to the All Freshman team.

All that’s left to do now is play our next 54 holes of stellar golf, starting tomorrow at Kingston Springs. If you’re in the area, please support Coach Limbaugh and the team. It’s a special group.