UNDERDOGS OLE MISS, OKLAHOMA SET FOR FINALS

Less than a month ago, Mississippi players and coaches didn’t know if they would make the NCAA baseball tournament.

This weekend, the Rebels will play for the national championship.

Next up is Oklahoma in the College World Series finals (4 p.m., ESPN2). The Sooners also had doubts about whether they would make the 64-team field until they got hot in the second half of the season and won the Big 12 Tournament for the conference’s automatic bid.

The best-of-three finals begin tonight at Charles Schwab Field, and all 16 national seeds will watch from home. An unseeded team will leave Omaha with the championship for the first time since Coastal Carolina in 2016.

“We’ve always thought we were this good,” Ole Miss pitcher Hunter Elliott said Friday. “I think at one point we were ranked No. 1. But like in baseball, sometimes you scuffle, and we were scuffling there for a while, but we just continued to believe and knew we were good enough, and we ended up here.”

Ole Miss (40-23) and Oklahoma, as No. 2 regional seeds, had to go on the road for regionals and super regionals. Oklahoma (4522) went 3-0 in CWS bracket play to make the finals; Ole Miss went 3-1 and had to beat Arkansas in a second bracket final.

“In a lot of ways they’re similar to us,” OU center fielder Tanner Tredaway said. “They do a lot of small things well. They’ve got power in the lineup. They’re a really good ballclub. They’ve been playing with a chip on their shoulder just like we have. They were in question for a regional, and they’re here to make a statement just like we are.”

Ole Miss’ pitching staff entered the tournament with a 4.68 ERA but 11th nationally at 10.7 strikeouts per nine innings. The Rebels have been dominant on the mound the entire tournament, posting back-to-back shutouts in their super-regional sweep at Southern Mississippi and allowing seven earned runs in 36 innings (1.75 ERA) while striking out 38 in Omaha.

Calvin Harris, Kevin Graham, Justin Bench and Kemp Alderman have provided most of the offense, combining to bat .397 (25 of 63) and drive in 15 runs.

As they were in the regular season, the Sooners have been led offensively by Tredaway and Peyton Graham at the CWS. Tredaway is batting .500 (7 of 14) and Graham .545 (6 of 11).

Oklahoma is bidding to become the first school to win national championships in softball and baseball in the same year. Patty Gasso’s Sooners won their sixth Women’s College World Series title two weeks ago.