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A baseball team maintaining good standing in the polls is kind of like a celebrity maintaining a good public image.
Right Field Review
Right Field Review
When Tiger Woods cheated on his wife and she subsequently beat his ass with a golf club, he took a hit in public perception. Ole Miss suffered a similarly humiliating beating when they were swept by Alabama three weeks ago (nothing happened guys, we just wrecked our SUV). Tiger rehabbed his image by going through "sex therapy" (which I contend was two weeks of playing PS3 and looking at nudie magazines). The Diamond Rebs rehabbed their image by taking two of three on the road against a ranked Mississippi State team.
And hey, it worked! The polls were released on Monday, and the Rebs have managed to pull themselves back up to their pre-Bama positions, and even a bit higher. None of the five national polls have Ole Miss ranked worse than No. 13 and they carry a mean ranking of 12.2. The Coaches' Poll has us at No. 10, and is therefore the most accurate and prestigious poll until another poll ranks us higher and then they can go to hell. The biggest jump was a seven-spot leap in Perfect Game, which moved us from 20 to 13.
Here's the complete list. Click the links if you want to see the polls in their entirety.
Poll | Rank | Previous |
Baseball America | 13 | 19 |
Collegiate Baseball | 13 | 17 |
NCBWA | 12 | 14 |
Perfect Game | 13 | 20 |
USA Today Coaches' Poll | 10 | 13 |
State, as you would imagine, took a hit across the board. They now sit at No. 22 or worse in all five polls and have been dropped entirely by the Coaches' Poll, which still carries seven SEC teams.
The Rebs are considered the third best SEC team in most of the polls, sitting behind South Carolina and LSU. The Tigers, who open a three-game series in Oxford this Thursday on ESPN U, are as high as seventh. That No. 7 vs. No. 10 matchup is gonna look pretty sexy on the ticker.