Mike Bianco Named Baseball America’s 2022 College Coach Of The Year

Image credit: Mike Bianco (Photo by Samuel Lewis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Mike Bianco has been a coach for 32 years and a head coach for 25 years, the last 22 coming at Mississippi. Over more than three decades, Bianco had seen just about everything the game has to offer. But then the 2022 season delivered a whole new challenge for him and the Rebels.

Ole Miss ranked No. 9 in the Preseason Top 25. It returned what was expected to be one of the best lineups in the country and got off to a hot start, ascending to the top of the rankings in mid-March. A top-10 showdown against Tennessee in Swayze Field awaited and it was with that series that the season changed for the Rebels.

Tennessee swept Ole Miss in Oxford, outscoring the Rebels 26-7 on the weekend. It was the Rebels’ first series loss of the season and by the end of April, they had lost five of their last six SEC series and four straight. They were 7-14 in conference play, had long since dropped out of the Top 25 and had all but used up their margin for error for an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament.

Ole Miss didn’t give in. It swept Missouri and then Louisiana State. Still, the Rebels were on the bubble of the NCAA Tournament on Selection Monday and waited anxiously to learn their fate. The selection committee listed Ole Miss as one of the last four teams in the field, giving the Rebels an opening. It was all they needed. They swept through regionals and super regionals to advance to the College World Series for the first time since 2014.

In Omaha, they continued to roll. Ole Miss beat Auburn and Arkansas to advance to the finals, where it met Oklahoma. As they had with every other team they met in the postseason, the Rebels summarily beat the Sooners. They swept the best-of-three series, giving Ole Miss its first national championship in program history.

“We haven’t had the easiest road to get here,” Bianco said. “I think it teaches us all, I think even as a coach that’s been in it 30-plus years, it teaches you these lessons that I’m sure we’ll use down the road when you hit some adversity; that, yeah, you think you have it tough now, but this team did this. This is where they were, and this is where they ended up.”

Bianco, 55, has had some great teams over the years. In 2005, Ole Miss won 48 games and reached super regionals with Chris Coughlan and Zack Cozart leading the way. In 2014, the Rebels reached the bracket final in the CWS, falling to Virginia. Big league stalwarts like Coughlan, Cozart, Lance Lynn, Drew Pomeranz and Seth Smith have come through Oxford, a testament to their recruitment and development.

But, fittingly, the 2022 team required one of Bianco’s best coaching efforts yet. These Rebels had a little bit of everything. They had elite players like shortstop Jacob Gonzalez, a likely top-10 pick next year, and program greats like first baseman Tim Elko and outfielder Kevin Graham. They had in-season development, as the pitching staff rounded into form in the second half behind the 1-2 punch of Dylan DeLucia and Hunter Elliott, both members of last year’s recruiting class who did not start the season in the rotation. They required the know-how to keep the team together through the difficult times, the motivation to help them dig out of the slump and the in-game tactics to help them through the NCAA Tournament. For all of his efforts this season, Bianco is the Baseball America 2022 Coach of the Year.

Bianco has long been well-admired around the game, but especially by those closest to him. This year’s team was no different.

 

“You know, it means the world that we were able to get Coach B a national championship here,” said Elko, the Rebels captain. “The coaches, they teach us so much. They keep us in line. They’re like friends to us, honestly. Obviously, they’re our coaches, but they’re the best. They’re the best there is. It’s an absolute joy to play for them. It’s a joy just to go to the field every day and practice and be around them.”

Part of Bianco’s strength this season – and, by extension, the Rebels’ strength – was the steady mentality that he brought to the team. While Ole Miss was struggling, it faced heavy criticism. The rumors and noise around the program grew intense. But Bianco never faltered under the pressure.

Assistant coach Carl Lafferty played for Bianco and has been on staff with him for 15 years. He said Bianco’s work to become the best leader he can be helped shape that steady mindset.

“At our core, we have a lot of the same principles he had when he first set foot on campus,” Lafferty said. “But he’s always looking for a way to evolve, to learn, to get better. He was a rock. He was an absolute rock. That dude was the same every day of the year, the same cat in the fall, in the spring, February, March, April, May, June. He was the same guy every day.”

Bianco caught at LSU for Skip Bertman from 1988-89 and then coached on Bertman’s staff from 1993-97. That time under Bertman, a two-time Coach of the Year, was foundational for Bianco. He learned a lot from his time playing and working for Bertman, who continues to be a mentor and this year advised Bianco on how to manage the extra attention and off days in Omaha.

In addition to the basic ins and outs of coaching that Bianco learned from Bertman during his time playing and working for him, he also picked up Bertman’s penchant for telling motivational stories to his teams. Before nearly every game, Bianco gathers the team and tells them a story that he believes relates to what they are going through at that point of the season. The stories span the realm of sports, history, business – anywhere there might be a story with a good lesson he can tell in a couple minutes.

The stories are quite popular with the players and typically draw a strong response on the occasion they make their way to social media. Bianco has a cataloguing system to make sure the stories don’t repeat more than once every three years or so, to keep the material fresh. He’s always looking for new material, as well. He is a vociferous reader and often finds new stories to adapt from the books he reads.

The motivational stories are just one part of who Bianco is as a coach, but they are representative of the meticulous way Bianco approaches coaching. He is consistent and diligent in finding ways to improve himself and the program.

“The thing he does so well is he handles a group of people as well as anyone I’ve ever seen,” Lafferty said. “He’s constantly evaluating himself on how to be a better leader.”

 

Ole Miss is a proud program with a solid history. But when Bianco arrived in Oxford after the 2000 season, the Rebels had been to the NCAA Tournament just twice since 1977. He built a powerhouse that has missed regionals just three times in his tenure. As the SEC has risen to become the center of college baseball, Ole Miss has risen with it.

Now, the Rebels have their national championship as the crowning achievement of theirs – and Bianco’s – efforts.

“Nobody (at Ole Miss) really talked about Omaha a lot until he got here,” athletic director Keith Carter said. “He’s the one who talked about coming here and winning national championships. Couldn’t be more happy for him.”

Carter spoke just outside the Ole Miss dugout at Charles Schwab Field less than an hour after the Rebels won the national championship. Fans remained in their sets, taking in the scene in front of them, as the Rebels milled around the diamond, just beginning their celebrations that would extend all the way back to Oxford.

Such a moment didn’t seem possible two months earlier, when the Rebels were mired in their slump. It hardly seemed possible on the morning of Selection Monday when their place in the NCAA Tournament was anything but assured.

But with Bianco leading them, the Rebels kept fighting all the way. They were embraced by fans in Oxford and beyond as they streaked toward Omaha and the national championship. It was a story of perseverance, one that made them easy to root for.

“They’ve fallen down, where not a lot of people believed that they were any good anymore, and a lot of people may have been disappointed in them,” Bianco said. “And I get that. It’s sports, and that’s part of it. But they didn’t let that affect them. They continued to believe in one another. They continued to push.”

The 2022 Rebels provided Bianco with an ending unlike any he had experienced as a head coach. It wasn’t an easy road, but he guided them through the challenges to the ultimate prize in Omaha. After 25 years as a head coach, he at last won the final game of the season.