Ole Miss rested its case Friday night, at least one day before it intended to.

Now, all the Rebels can do is sit in its hotel in Nashville and wait for a verdict, one that will come late Sunday afternoon.

Needing one win to clinch a bid to the NCAA Tournament, Ole Miss’ Achilles heel — a sheer lack of explosive scorers — was exposed in a Southeastern Conference Tournament quarterfinal loss to LSU.

Ole Miss, a team that began this season with such high hopes and at times showed promise that justified those lofty expectations, trailed LSU by just two points at halftime Friday night. At one point in the second half, the Rebels led by five.

LSU had too many weapons. Ole Miss simply didn’t have enough.

Devontae Shuler’s 3-pointer pulled Ole Miss to within one point in the final minute, but a defensive lapse committed by Jarkel Joiner on a pick-and-pop play by LSU created an open look for Darius Days, who knocked down the 3-pointer to extend the Tigers’ lead to four points.

“Give Days credit,” Joiner said. “He made a big shot.”

A Shuler turnover resulted in a Trendon Watford layup. Joiner’s 3-pointer with 20.4 seconds left pulled Ole Miss to within three points.

That was as close as Ole Miss got. Cameron Thomas made a pair of free throws with 12.2 seconds left to extend LSU’s lead to five points. Romello White’s tip-in at the buzzer ended things with Ole Miss trailing 76-73 and the guy who epitomizes everything that’s wrong with college athletics, LSU coach Will Wade, pumping his fists while his belly jiggled underneath his oversized tent-like pullover. Wade has assembled one hell of a talented roster. It was simply too much for Ole Miss Friday night.

“It was just the little toughness things that we didn’t execute today,” said White, who had 20 points and 13 rebounds Friday night.

There was no lack of effort. This Ole Miss team never quit this season. Not once. However, the Rebels are now 16-11 overall, 11-9 in the SEC. A win Friday would’ve put Ole Miss in the NCAA Tournament. It didn’t happen, so the Rebels’ collective fate is no longer in their hands.

I could spend paragraphs here dissecting what went wrong against the Tigers, but it doesn’t matter now. Ole Miss’ season is now in the hands of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. The Rebels will sit and wait for a little less than 48 hours, hoping the top of their resume outweighs the bottom of it.

“We’ve got some holes in our resume, but if you’re a committee member and you’re watching that game right there, you say that both of those teams are NCAA Tournament teams,” Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis said. “We’re playing like one now. We got beat by a really, really good LSU team who played at a very high level tonight.”

“We knew what was at stake when we came in,” said Joiner, who scored 26 points Friday. “We played our butts off. …I think we proved we are an NCAA Tournament team.”

“We fought to the end,” White said. “I feel like we definitely proved we are an NCAA Tournament team.”

This was an Ole Miss team that was good enough to sweep Auburn and Missouri. It beat Tennessee in Oxford, split with Mississippi State, beat Kentucky, won at South Carolina, etc. On the other hand, it was a team flawed enough to lose non-league games at Dayton and to Wichita State, to lose twice to Georgia, to lose at home to Mississippi State and to lose at Vanderbilt in March.

Change a couple of those losses to wins and Ole Miss isn’t even worried this weekend. The bubble is that soft. The Rebels might have to live with those what-ifs for the next few months, unless they’re granted a reprieve on Sunday. They’ll spend the rest of this weekend knowing it’s quite possible their season is over.

Davis said the Rebels will remain in Nashville this weekend, preparing as if they’re headed to Indianapolis Monday.

“We’ll see,” Davis said. “I don’t know. It depends on what may happen. If not, then the NIT selection comes out later (Sunday) and I know we’d look forward to playing in the NIT. I know it would be one of the best fields they’ve ever had with only 16 teams. We just think we have basketball ahead and we’re looking forward to that.”