JACKSON – When he was signed out of a Texas junior college in 2006, Scott Bittle was expected to be the dominant closer the Ole Miss Rebels needed to win the Southeastern Conference and maybe a College World Series.

Bittle’s 2007 season was anything but dominant. He struggled to a 2-5 record and seven saves.

What a difference a year makes.

On Monday night, Bittle won the 2008 Cellular South Ferriss Award for being the best collegiate baseball player in Mississippi.

Bittle beat out Southern Miss closer Tyler Conn and Delta State catcher Rickey Noland for the award, which is named after the former Boston Red Sox pitcher and Delta State Hall of Fame coach Dave “Boo” Ferriss.

“To win this award is really a tremendous honor because it’s named after “Boo” Ferriss and he’s been great for baseball in Mississippi,” Bittle said. He is the first Ole Miss player to win the award since 2005 when Warren Central’s Brian Pettway won.

Bittle, from Texarkana, Texas, has been great for Ole Miss this season. He leads the nation in strikeouts per nine innings at 15.8 and is a national semifinalist for the Clemens Award, given annually to the nation’s best college pitcher. His 109 strikeouts leads the SEC.

“Last year wasn’t a great year for me,” Bittle said. “I couldn’t control the big inning and I couldn’t make the big pitch.”

He entered this season, not knowing what role he would have.

“Basically I was going to be a guy that would eat up innings, but my approach was to take it one pitch at a time. Whatever the situation, I just had to get people out,” Bittle said.

He’s made a big believer out of Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco.

“He’s been terrific since Day 1,” Bianco said. “The great thing about Scott Past winners2008 Scott Bittle, Ole Miss2007 Ed Easley, Miss. State2006 Thomas Berkery, Miss. State2005 Brian Pettway, Ole Miss2004 Stephen Head, Ole Miss

Bittle, though, is he’s not just a one inning or two inning guy. As we saw on Saturday, he came in and threw seven innings of relief. He threw 116 pitches and single-handedly won the game for us.”

The win over Kentucky in Lexington clinched a berth into this week’s SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala. Ole Miss (34-22) opens against top-seeded Georgia on Wednesday at 5 p.m.

Bianco said Bittle started out OK during his sophomore season at Ole Miss but then let some bad outings get to his head.

“He was the conference leader in saves at one point, but then he had a couple of bad outings and it snowballed on him. Part of it, though, was we were putting him into some difficult situations and we were having difficulty at the end of the game.

“Coming into this season, we felt with the depth of our staff, we didn’t know if he would be the closer, but he’s just been terrific.”

The Kentucky win moved Bittle to 6-1 on the season. He has a team best 1.45 ERA in 62 innings of work.

“I just wanted to help my team win and the guys have made the defensive plays behind me. The only tough thing I’ve had to do was wing this (acceptance) speech,”

Southern Miss’ Conn, who is from Ocean Springs, is the national co-leader in saves with 16. He will lead the Golden Eagles into the Conference USA Tournament Wednesday in New Orleans.

“It was an honor to be here. Scott deserved it. I saw him pitch and he’s had an awesome year,” Conn said.

Southern Miss coach Corky Palmer said his team wouldn’t be a No. 2 seed in the C-USA Tournament without Conn.

“He’s saved 99 percent of his games and has been tremendous for us,” Palmer said.

Noland led Delta State to the NCAA South Central Regionals with a .417 batting average and 14 home runs. The Statesmen’s season ended Monday afternoon with a loss to Ouachita Baptist in Cleveland. Noland flew to Jackson right after the game ended.

All three of the finalists got to be interviewed in front of the audience at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame by two time American League Manager of the Year and current ESPN’s Baseball Tonight analyst Buck Showalter.

Showalter played five seasons in the New York Yankees organization. He was then given manager positions in the Yankees farm system, rising through the ranks until he was offered the Yankees manager job by owner George Steinbrenner in 1992. He lasted three seasons, but was named AL Manager of the Year in 1994. He was the first manager for the Arizona Diamondbacks and then got a job with the Texas Rangers and won his second AL Manager of the Year award in 2004.

Ron Polk, who coached his final game at Mississippi State on Saturday, was later honored by the Cellular South committee with a huge dart board featuring the face of NCAA President Myles Brand.

“Best gift I’ve ever had. I can’t wait to get back to Starkville and start throwing darts at it,” Polk said.