Ole Miss baseball coach Mike Bianco might have said it best when he described Kemp Alderman’s season at Ole Miss.
“It was one of the greatest years that any hitter has every had at Ole Miss,” Bianco said.
Alderman, a former Newton County Academy standout, was rewarded for his efforts and named the 2023 Ferris Trophy winner on Monday at the Golden Moon Hotel and Casino.
Alderman had monster junior season for the Rebels this season and was named a second-team All-SEC pick on Monday as well. Alderman led the Rebels with a .376 batting average with 61 RBIs and 19 home runs. Last year, Alderman hit .286 as a sophomore with 11 home runs and 45 RBIs and helped lead the Rebels to the national championship.
Alderman was humble in receiving the award named after legendary baseball player and coach Bo Ferriss and is given annually to the state’s best college baseball player.
“I’m very grateful for this,” Alderman said. “I never thought that this would happen, especially after my first year that this is how my college career would turn out. With the guys who were nominated, they were really great players, so I really didn’t know who was going to get it. It really could have went to any of us and it would have been the right decision so I’m just very blessed to win this award.”
Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco said it’s refreshing to see a player like Alderman be honored.
“We have had a few of these award winners but this is special because of our relationship,” Bianco said. “I have known him since he was 10 years old and have watched him grow up and watched him grow into not only a great baseball player but a great young man. I have known the family for a long time. This is a difficult award to win. You start looking at the guys nominated and how great college baseball is in our state, it’s tough. We’ve been pretty good lately and we haven’t won the award at Ole Miss in 10 years.”
Alderman surged on the scene at Ole Miss the last two years. After getting just 11 at-bats as a true freshman, Alderman played in 61 games last year and helped the Rebels to the national championship. Then Alderman led the Rebels in most hitting categories this season and had what Bianco called “one of the greatest in school history.”
“He started out as a freshman and it looked like he wasn’t even going to play but he got 11 at-bats,” Bianco said. “And then last year, which was a giant leap, he hit .280 last year and had double-digit home runs in the middle of the lineup on a national championship team. And then this year, he hit almost 100 points higher and almost doubles his home run totals from the year before and has arguably the greatest years in Ole Miss baseball history.”
Bianco said Alderman wasn’t “quite ready” to play when he got on campus but continued to get better with a lot of hard work.
“I’m so proud of Kemp,” Bianco said. “He started off a young and this is a tough game and it’s tough to hit in the SEC. As coaches, we didn’t this he was quite ready as a freshman after the fall. He had to work and improve and not chase as many balls. And we didn’t know whether he was going to pitch or not. But to Kemp’s credit, he went to work in the batting cage. In the spring, he just kept getting better and better and we eventually pulled the redshirt off of him and he ended up getting 11 at-bats and had a walk-off home run against LSU that year.”
Bianco said that Alderman has always been a power hitter but has become a complete hitter.
“So much is said about Kemp and his power and how hard he hits the ball and he hits it as hard as anybody I have ever seen,” Bianco said. “But he is a complete hitter, he hits it from foul pole to foul pole and finished with a .376 batting average. When you look back at the ledger and the record books, he is in the top five statistics in all of those categories and he did all of that in one year.”
Alderman said he doesn’t plan on playing summer ball this season but will work out and train as the 2023 MLB draft approaches.
Even coach Mississippi State head coach Chris Lemonis praised Alderman.
“I sure hope Kemp Alderman is getting drafted,” Lemonis said. “When he came to plate, I would ask what we are throwing. Everybody would say ‘I don’t know.’ I thought, let’s just throw it in the dirt and see if he will chase it.”a
