Ole Miss baseball stumped by Maryland in 3-1 loss to open Los Angeles Regional

Despite a rocky outing from Christian Trent and a terrible day at the plate, Ole Miss found itself with bases loaded, one out, down just two runs in the bottom of sixth inning against Maryland. But a line-out two batters later ended the Rebs' only real opportunity to get back into the game, dropping them to a 3-1 loss and into the losers bracket of the Los Angeles regional.

They'll now face the loser of UCLA vs. CSU Bakersfield (so CSU Bakersfield) in a win-or-go-home game on Saturday night.

Trent -- the same guy that allowed just one earned run during the run to Omaha last season -- gave up three consecutive doubles in the first inning to fall behind 2-0 before anybody'd settled into their seats. But then he, well ... settled down isn't the right phrase. He continued to labor -- consistently missing high with his fastball and putting runners all over the bases -- but only allowed one more run over his next 5.1 innings (on a suicide squeeze at that). You credit a good bit of that to Austin Knight, who gunned out three would-be base stealers at second.

But the offense just couldn't get anything going against Maryland ace Mike Shawaryn, who racked up nine strikeouts over 5.1 innings. But he also gave up five walks, three of which came with one out in the bottom of the seventh. After a pitching change (that Trent, who was upwards of 40 pitches and laboring heavily after two innings, outlasted Shawaryn is bewildering), freshman pinch hitter Nic Perkins drew a bases-loaded walk to plate the Rebs' first run. But that was all they could get.

Sikes Orvis almost pulled Ole Miss to within one in the eighth, but got flat robbed by Maryland's Lamonte Wade.

In all honesty, though this game wasn't as close as the score suggests. Maryland left 11 runners on base and outhit the Rebs 9-2.