All-time Ole Miss baseball great Jacob Gonzalez has multiple hits in four of his first five games since the Chicago White Sox promoted him to AA last week.
Gonzalez has 11 hits in 25 at-bats (.458) with a home run and seven RBI. His Birmingham Barons have won all five of the road games they’ve played in Biloxi with Gonzalez in the lineup.
Gonzalez has been reunited with Tim Elko as teammates once more. The pair won a national championship together as the shortstop and first baseman, respectively, for the Rebels in 2022. Gonzalez was the No. 15 overall selection of the Chicago White Sox in the 2023 MLB Draft.
Elko, an all-time program great and former 10th-rounder, was a three-time Rebel captain and famously said, ‘Don’t let the Rebs get hot,’ which became their postseason rallying cry in the title-winning summer. He started every game that year.
Elko led the team in slugging percentage (.642), RBI (75), home runs (24) and total bases (154). He set a new single-season program record for home runs. Gonzalez, a then-sophomore, clubbed a career-high 18 round-trippers. He paced the Rebels in runs (73), walks (50) and triples (3).
Gonzalez was 3 for 4 with a home run, two RBI and two runs scored in the second of a two-game sweep of Oklahoma in the College World Series finals. Elko was a three-time Ole Miss captain.
Elko homered in the Barons’ 7-1 win on Saturday, his fifth of the year. The pair has more combined RBI (14) in the series than the entire Shuckers team (13).
OLE MISS WOMEN’S TRACK AND FIELD CONCLUDE REGIONAL PLAY WITH FOUR MORE NATIONAL TICKETS
The Ole Miss women’s track and field sprinters put on a clinic on the fourth and final day of the 2024 NCAA East Regional on Saturday.
The Rebels punched four more tickets to the national meet, bringing the overall combined total for their men and women to 14, the second-most in school history.
Ole Miss has produced at least nine NCAA entires in every season under ninth-year head coach Connie Price-Smith. The Rebels are averaging 11.1.
Senior All-American McKenzie Long earned three separate berths: 100-meter, 200-meter and 4×100 triple, where she was the second leg. Ole Miss claimed an automatic bid with a winning time of 42.72, the second-fastest ever at Ole Miss. Four Rebels have clocked the Top 3 fastest 4×100-meter relay times in history over the last two months alone.
Long posted a 10.92 100-meter dash to break the record for the University of Kentucky Outdoor Track and Field Facility.
Long is No. 4 in the United States and No. 5 in the world this season in the category. She’s No. 10 all-time.
Long, the world leader in the 200-meter, won easily with the second-best time in East Regional history (22.10). Long is the only runner in the world this year with wind-legal times of sub-11.00 and sub-22.10. She’s one of just four with multiple wind-legal 22.10s ever. She won the SEC with a world-leading 22.03 two weeks ago.
SEC Champion Gabrielle Matthews, a sophomore,punched her ticket in a 400-meter hurdles competition also featuring reigning NCAA Champion Savannah Sutherland of Michigan.
Matthews finished second (55.45) for an auto-bid to Oregon. No Rebel had broken 57 seconds in the event prior to her arrival in 2023. Matthews, a sophomore, has now done so four times since April 12. She’s the first Rebel woman to qualify in the event since 2011. She’s just the third to ever do it.
The 2024 NCAA Outdoor Championships return to TrackTown USA at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field June 5-8.
OLE MISS NATIONAL QUALIFIERS (14 ENTRIES, 13 ATHLETES)
Iangelo Atkinstall-Daley – Men’s triple jump
Jahniya Bowers – Women’s 4×100-meter relay
Jake Dalton – Men’s hammer
Jalani Davis – Women’s jammer
Toby Gillen – Men’s 5K
Akilah Lewis – Women’s 4×100-meter relay
McKenzie Long – Women’s 100-meter dash; women’s 200-meter dash; women’s 4×100-meter relay
Gabrielle Matthews – Women’s 400-meter hurdles; women’s 4×100-meter relay
Akaoma Odeluga – Women’s shot put
Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan – Men’s shot put; men’s hammer
Skylar Soli – Women’s hammer
Mensi Stiff – Women’s shot put
Ahmad Young Jr. – Men’s 110-meter hurdles
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