Ole Miss awoke Thursday morning to a bit of a new world.
Just 15 days after a listless performance at Arkansas and just 12 days removed from a lackluster loss at Georgia, the Rebels are the hottest team in the Southeastern Conference.
Just 12 days ago, Ole Miss’ NCAA Tournament chances resembled mine — and likely yours — with Emily Ratajkowski. Today, the Rebels are absolutely in that conversation.
Life — and college basketball — comes at you fast.
“We spent a lot of of time with our team individually and in groups after Georgia,” Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis said Wednesday night, minutes after his team’s dominant 21-point win over No. 10 Missouri. “It wasn’t so much that we hammered them physically. It wasn’t a toughness thing or three-hour practices. It was probably more mental stuff and gathering our team. We still knew. We practiced good and I think it’s just having success.”
Days after that soul-crushing loss in Athens, Ole Miss rallied for a 52-50 win at home against Tennessee. New life was breathed into the locker room.
“Everybody in the country knows how good they are,” Davis said, referring to the Volunteers. “Our players know. It just gave them that confidence like we do belong.”
Later that week, Ole Miss went to Auburn and won in overtime on Devontae Shuler’s jumper with 0.2 seconds left.
“We closed it out against a really tough team and I think from a confidence standpoint helped us a bunch,” Davis said.
As of Thursday morning, Ole Miss was up to No. 56 in the NET. In a year where no one is exactly sure how the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee will do its work and/or make its decisions, that might or might not be a good spot.
Here’s the deal: There are a handful of games that could come back to haunt Ole Miss. The Rebels had a real shot to win at Dayton back in December but couldn’t close it out. On Jan. 2, hours after the football Rebels won the Outback Bowl over Indiana, Davis’ team let Wichita State off the hook. Then there was that week in January when Ole Miss basically gave away wins at Florida and at home against Georgia.
The loss at Alabama doesn’t hurt. Neither does the home loss to LSU or the setback in Fayetteville. Those teams are sure-fire NCAA Tournament locks at this point. The other losses? Well, the sting still lingers.
However, there’s not a damn thing Ole Miss can do about it now. The mantra from here on out, to steal a phrase from the late Al Davis, is simple. Just win, baby. If Ole Miss can just win from this point forward, things should take care of themselves.
And there are reasons to believe the Rebels can do just that. On Wednesday, foul trouble limited Romello White to less than 12 minutes of court time. He scored just six points and grabbed just two rebounds. Khadim Sy is still out with a knee injury suffered against Tennessee. With Jeremiah Tilmon roaming the paint for Missouri, that was a recipe for potential disaster. Sammy Hunter played 15 1/2 minutes. KJ Buffen played almost 26. Ole Miss limited Tilmon to just six points and six rebounds. Just days after White scored 30 points and hauled down 10 rebounds at Auburn, the Rebels were asked to pick up his slack and they did it with aplomb.
Devontae Shuler and Jarkel Joiner, the Rebels’ starting backcourt, have been pretty consistent for weeks now. The difference is others are beginning to chip in. Robert Allen was huge for Ole Miss against Tennessee and Auburn. Luis Rodriguez had a monster game against Missouri, finishing with 15 points, six rebounds, an assist and a steal.
The Rebels’ bench is getting deeper. Heralded freshman Matthew Murrell, who struggled mightily early in the year, is beginning to contribute. Murrell played almost 16 minutes Wednesday, contributing five points, three rebounds and three assists. Throughout the offseason and preseason, Davis gushed about his roster. Over the last three games, we’ve started to see why he was so optimistic.
Ole Miss is a roster with a lot of new faces. A weird preseason, made weirder by a COVID outbreak at the beginning of the season, clearly made chemistry an issue early on. Here in mid-February, Ole Miss looks like a team playing with joy. On Wednesday, the Rebels looked like a giddy young couple on Valentine’s Day — all smiles, hand-in-hand, giving each other plenty of words of affirmation.
Those early struggles, of course, mean there’s no margin for error moving forward. Ole Miss travels to South Carolina Saturday, and the Gamecocks, a team absolutely riddled by COVID issues all season, played Alabama within three points Tuesday. Mississippi State comes to Oxford on Feb. 20. The Rebels have to travel to Missouri on Feb. 23. The final week of the regular season features a trip to Vanderbilt and a home date on March 2 against Kentucky. Only one of those games — at Missouri — looks like an opportunity for a Quadrant 1 win. Realistically, Ole Miss needs a 4-1 mark in those games to feel good about things when and if it heads to Nashville for the SEC Tournament, still tentatively planned for March 10-14 at Bridgestone Arena.
“It’s just back to preparation and practice,” Davis said. “That’s why I never gave up hope with our team. We were always a good team to come to the gym with. We just had our struggles in some offensive areas. We’ll just get right back to basics (Thursday). I think in the last couple of weeks we’ve been a lot more cognizant of mental fatigue and physical fatigue and how we’re handling our guys on the court. Those things I think really, really matter starting in the middle of February.”
Just two weeks ago, hope wasn’t lost but the Rebels’ postseason hopes all but needed an Amber alert. That hope abounds today, however, and Ole Miss is beginning to look like a team that is finding its identity at exactly the right moment.
