Former Clemson baseball player starring for SEC school after ‘no-brainer’ transfer
Around this time last year, Tristan Bissetta didn’t know what his future held.
Now, the former Clemson baseball outfielder is smashing home runs at a record clip for an SEC team and will make his College World Series debut Friday in Omaha.
Bissetta, a Greenville native and third-generation Clemson fan, played four seasons of baseball for the Tigers under coaches Monte Lee and Erik Bakich. He was voted the team’s most improved player in 2024 after emerging as a quality starter.
But an injury-plagued 2025 season prompted a change of scenery. Bissetta hit the transfer portal last June and landed at Ole Miss for his final season of eligibility.
The move was a bit of a gamble for both sides, but it’s worked out beautifully.
On Saturday, Bissetta hit a key eighth-inning home run to help Ole Miss sweep No. 4 overall seed Auburn in the super regional round and reach its first College World Series since 2022.
He’s started all 62 games for the Rebels and set career highs across the board offensively.
And for good measure, he’s hit 23 home runs – a top 20 number nationally, the second most in Ole Miss single-season history and 13 more home runs than he hit during his entire 87-game Clemson career (10).
Bissetta and Ole Miss (41-21) will play their opening College World Series game Friday against No. 5 UNC. It’ll be the latest highlight in the former Clemson outfielder’s banner year.
Bissetta: Injuries led to uncertain portal process
Bissetta (6-1, 225) has set career highs in home runs (23), RBIs (61), hits (65), doubles (11), walks (38) and total bases (145) this season. He’s among the team’s leaders in all those categories, too, and is batting .277 while starting in the outfield.
Given those statistics, you’d think he was a top transfer target last year. But a tough run of injuries significantly impacted Bissetta’s stats – and his portal stock.
As he detailed in interviews last year, Bissetta had a bone spur injury in his wrist which required surgery and sidelined him until right before Clemson’s 2025 season started. He was in and out of the lineup, slowly getting back up to speed … then he tore the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his throwing elbow in April.
Bissetta, a lefty who also worked as a pitcher at Clemson, underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery. When he hit the portal in June, he was coming off a .227 batting year, rehabbing his injury and “didn’t really know what I was going to get” offers-wise, he said on an Ole Miss Athletics podcast in October.
Dominic Listi – a former Clemson player turned college baseball analyst – was Bissetta’s roommate at Clemson last year. He recalled in a post on X this week how Bissetta’s transfer interest was minimal, given his UCL injury.
“He was not getting much love,” Listi said of Bissetta.
But an assist from another South Carolina connection put Bissetta on the Rebels’ radar. Ole Miss pitcher and fellow Greenville native Taylor Rabe knew of Bissetta because they grew up training at the same facility, so he name-dropped Bissetta to his coaching staff.
“You never know what to expect when that happens,” Bissetta said on the Ole Miss podcast. “Fortunately enough, that was what set it off. The coaches liked what they saw once they looked into me, and here we are.”
Picking the Rebels, he added, was a “no-brainer.”
Hitting homers and making an SEC impact
In his first and only season in Oxford, Bissetta has made an instant impact.
On Feb. 18 against Jackson State, he became the first Ole Miss player to hit two home runs in a single inning since 2017. He also became the fastest Rebel to reach 13 home runs in a single season (23 games) and has four games with multiple home runs.
Bissetta’s 23rd home run of the season – which came in Game 2 of the Auburn Super Regional on Saturday – gave him sole possession of the second most home runs in a single season in program history. He could break or tie Ole Miss’ single-season record of 24 home runs during the College World Series.
While the Rebels surge toward Omaha, Bissetta’s former program is coming off a rough year. Clemson baseball was 31-26 and 10-20 in the ACC this season, posting one of its worst ever records in conference play and missing the postseason for the first time under Bakich and third time in six years.
Bissetta grew up in a household of Clemson fans and football season ticket holders and often said the Tigers were his dream school growing up.
But the Bissettas are loving life in the SEC, too.
“The family is totally behind this,” Bissetta said of his transfer in October. “Frankly, they wanted to see me make a change. I don’t think there could be two people more happy about me wearing Rebels colors than my mom and dad.”
This story was originally published June 10, 2026 at 8:00 AM.
