OXFORD — Ole Miss played with fire late in Wednesday night's game against Texas A&M.

In the final 20 seconds, the Rebels finally got burned.

Manny Obaseki’s 3-pointer with 13 seconds left gave Texas A&M its first lead of the game.

It was the only one the Aggies needed.

A crowd of 10,008, the second largest in the history of the Sandy John Black Pavilion, filed out shocked as No. 13 Texas A&M stole a 63-62 win over the 16th-ranked Rebels.

Ole Miss failed to score a field goal in the final 3:49 and blew an eight-point lead with two minutes left. The Aggies closed the game with a 6-0 run.

“I thought we did everything we needed to do to win the game,” Ole Miss coach Chris Beard said. “The game’s kind of mathematically over if we can just inbound the ball and make one or two passes and absorb their foul and hit a decent percentage of free throws. Obviously, there were too many unforced turnovers in the last few minutes of the game. I’m just disappointed. …Unfortunately for us tonight, there are lots of lessons to be learned.”

Ole Miss fell to 15-4 overall and 4-2 in the Southeastern Conference. Texas A&M improved to 15-4 overall and 4-2 in the league.

“We put ourselves in position to beat what I think is one of the best teams in college basketball,” Beard said. “We just didn’t finish the game like you have to finish the game.”

Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams said his team was “just trying to create a little bit of chaos” in the final minutes.

“So many things had to go right because we’re having to overcome math that’s really hard,” Williams said.

Pharrel Payne’s free throws with 1:54 left cut Ole Miss’ lead to 60-54. A Jace Carter layup with 1:05 left trimmed it further to 60-54. Zhuric Phelps’ layup with 29 seconds left pulled the Aggies to within 60-58.

Matthew Murrell’s free throws with 26 seconds left pushed the lead back out to 62-58 but a short jumper from Phelps in the paint got the Aggies back within a basket.

Davon Barnes missed the front end of a one-and-one and the Aggies pushed in transition, setting up Obaseki’s 3-pointer.

“As good as Ole Miss is from a dead-ball situation, I was hoping something good would happen so we’d have at least a long close-out or a semi-clean look,” Williams said.

Jaemyn Brakefield got a look on Ole Miss’ ensuing possession but missed. The ball ended up on the floor and both teams scrambled for it as time expired.

“I thought we got some decent shots during that stretch, but I also thought we had way too many late shot-clock situations,” Beard said, adding that he wanted his team to stay aggressive late. “During that stretch, we were in late shot-clock more than we were all season.”

Points, predictably, came at a premium. Ole Miss tried to take advantage of Texas A&M’s penchant for turnovers. The Aggies, meanwhile, entered the game as the nation’s top offensive rebounding team. Rebounding hasn’t been the Rebels’ strong suit.

Ole Miss forced 20 turnovers while committing just 13 and won points off turnovers, 14-6. Texas A&M out-rebounded the Rebels, 48-31, and won second-chance points, 13-4.

“I thought we did do a good job forcing turnovers,” Beard said. “We could’ve turned those turnovers into baskets, especially in the last four or five minutes of the game. Again, there were a lot of good things. If college basketball were a 37-minute game, we’re sitting here celebrating one of our best performances.

“I thought our guys deserved to win tonight. We played well. We executed the scouting report for 37 1/2, 38 minutes. There were just some routine plays you have to make when the game is basically mathematically over. We had veteran players on the floor. We just didn’t get it done.”

Ole Miss led by seven, 33-26, at halftime, never trailing in the opening 20 minutes. The Rebels led by as many as 11 with 5:12 left before the break before the Aggies cut it to single digits.

Phelps led Texas A&M with 14 points. Obaseki added 12 and Payne 10.

Sean Pedulla led Ole Miss with 16 points. Malik Dia and Jaylen Murray had 12 each and Brakefield finished with 10.

Ole Miss travels to Columbia to face No. 22 Missouri Saturday. Tipoff is scheduled for 5 p.m.

Notes:

Murrell sets record: Murrell played in his 136th game in an Ole Miss uniform Wednesday, passing Zach Graham, who played in 135 games at Ole Miss from 2008 through 2011.

No charity: In the first half, the two teams combined to shoot just two free throws. Henry Coleman III made one of two shots from the free throw line. No one else from either team attempted a single free throw. The first half wasn’t an anomaly.

Ole Miss took just four free throws all night. Texas A&M finished 7-for-9 from the free throw line.

Afterwards, Beard declined to comment on that statistic, saying it was “really hard to comprehend and understand” from his perspective playing 16 minutes of college basketball and getting just one foul called on the opponent.