HOOVER, Ala. — Ole Miss baseball coach Mike Bianco said Tuesday that he expects to be back for a 25th season coaching the Rebels.

"You'll have to ask my boss," Bianco said. "But I expect to be back."

Bianco's comments came after Connor Hujsak's two-out, two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning turned a one-run Ole Miss lead into a 2-1 Mississippi State victory in the opening round of the SEC Tournament, ending the 12th-seeded Rebels' season.

It will be the second consecutive year without an NCAA Tournament bid for Bianco on the back of the 2022 national championship. Before this stretch, Ole Miss had missed the postseason just three times in Bianco's tenure.

The Rebels (27-29) finished with just 11 SEC victories in 2024. No program in the conference has had fewer league wins over the last two seasons.

When asked what made him confident he could author a turnaround, Bianco pointed toward his previous success.

"We don't make it the last couple years, but I think this year, we're a couple wins away," Bianco said. "Again, I don't wanna go through the RPI and strength of schedule and all of those different things. We have to be better and we will be. We've always responded and we will again."

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Bianco can be considered the architect of modern Ole Miss baseball, and has won consistently since his arrival in Oxford for the 2001 season. He reached a landmark 1,000th victory as a head coach this season with a win over Georgia. Over 900 of those wins have come at Ole Miss.

Sophomore first baseman Will Furniss was responsible for the only Ole Miss run in Tuesday's game, swatting a fifth-inning homer against the fifth-seeded Bulldogs (37-19). He issued an unprompted endorsement of Bianco during his postgame media session.

"The baseball program used to be non-existent," Furniss said. "Until he came here, he took it from nothing to having ‒ we wouldn't even have fans to be mad about us losing if he didn't turn it around. He's done it before. He has a track record of doing it."

Bianco has a contract that runs through June 2026 and entitles him to $1.625 million annually in base salary. His buyout terms are unclear because of the way Ole Miss structures its coaching contracts. His state contract is publicly available, but he also has a contract with the Ole Miss Athletic Foundation that is not accessible to the public.

David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.

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This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: What Mike Bianco said of his Ole Miss baseball future at SEC Tournament