After another postseason run that fell short of Omaha and the College World Series, Ole Miss fans have to be asking themselves: Are we ever going to make it?

All of the pieces are there for a run to the NCAA crown, something the Rebels have never done. Five times, the Rebels have appeared in the College World Series, the last in 1972.

Coach Mike Bianco has turned the Rebels from also-rans to perennial participants. In the past 10 years, the Rebels have made the regionals nine times.

Swayze Field is one of the great environments in college baseball. Bianco’s team drew 186,272 fans in 2012, the 10th straight year the Rebels have put more than 180,000 through the turnstiles in Oxford.

Bianco recruits great players, both the heavily hyped and the ones off everyone’s radar screens. He recruits well in state and out of state. Since he arrived in 2001, 67 of his players, including Vicksburg’s Justin and Jordan Henry, have been drafted into the Major Leagues. His teams play quality baseball with a minimum of mistakes.

But why haven’t they been able to book a trip to Omaha? The answer is an easy one.

The Rebels have seemingly had the misfortune in the postseason of running into the hottest team of the moment. TCU was that team this year. The Horned Frogs were hotter than the surface of the sun coated with jalapeno peppers and horseradish, blasting 10 home runs at the College Station Regional. They climbed out of the losers’ bracket and swept out the previously unblemished Rebels.

Like a good country song, the heartbreaks have multiplied for Rebel baseball fans in recent years.

In 2004, the Rebels hit .156 as a team and were swept out of their own regional by Washington and Western Kentucky. Texas crushed Ole Miss hopes in 2005, taking a pair of heartbreakers after Ole Miss won the opening game. Texas later lost to Cal State-Fullerton in the CWS championship series.

The next year, the Rebels, fresh off the SEC Tournament title and a 44-win regular season, beat Miami in the first game only to be outscored 21-9 in the final two games. Arizona State broomed the Rebels out of the Tempe Super Regional and Miami outslugged the Rebels again in the championship game of the 2008 Coral Gables Regional.

The cruelest blow was in 2009, when Virginia took two out of three from the SEC regular-season champion Rebels. In 2010, Ole Miss won its Charlottesville Regional opener (apparently a bad omen) before being sent packing by Virginia and St. John’s.

So much of baseball, as evidenced by last year’s improbable World Series title run by the St. Louis Cardinals, is predicated on being the best team at the right time.

Now the Rebels have to become that team. With all of the bad luck in the NCAA Tournament, they’re due.

Just not this year.

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Steve Wilson is sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. You can follow him on Twitter at vpsportseditor. He can be reached at 601-636-4545, ext. 142 or at swilson@vicksburgpost.com.