OXFORD | The good news is guts and positive pressure, and the fight that comes with a 20-game winning streak, surfaced in the first game Saturday, lifting Ole Miss to a short-lived celebration after three ninth-inning runs to even the series against UCF.

The bad news is at some point the Rebels needed to be the better baseball team, and that never happened. Instead, the Golden Knights dominated the nightcap and claimed a 2 out of 3 weekend against No. 1 Ole Miss. A 5-4 UCF win on Friday should have been a premonition for what was to come.

UCF, 1-3 when it arrived in Oxford, was pelted by FAU twice last weekend and lost 7-0 to Stetson in the midweek. The Knights are flawed but scrappy and lifted their play to match the occasion. They are 6-1 in their last seven games against SEC teams.

But for everything UCF did right, for how it didn’t panic or play out of control or abandon its approach in critical times, Ole Miss was the opposite. The Rebels are more talented, but they weren’t better. They were worse in all phases. The reality is they were closer to getting swept than winning the series.

Ole Miss played well defensively, and while it wasn’t its best from a sharpness standpoint, the pitching is a known commodity and was good enough to win the series. All three starters were two days short of normal rest. Doug Nikhazy, Gunnar Hoglund and Derek Diamond collectively pitched 19 innings, allowing eight runs with 29 strikeouts and one walk.

Roles are being defined, but the bullpen will figure itself out over time. There were no warning signs or flashing lights of destruction ahead.

UCF was selectively aggressive and hit the ball out of the park in key times throughout the two days, not giving the Rebels many free strikes or outs and following the recipe of how it could win more than it lost in Oxford.

It was a stark contrast to Ole Miss at the plate.

The Rebels are without leadoff spark plug Peyton Chatagnier, and he’s certainly part of the engine, but things sputtered nonstop. The preseason concerns about experience versus returners seemed to manifest against UCF.

Ole Miss has seven offensive starters back from the 37-home-run barrage of 2020 but only three full-time starters who have ever seen an SEC pitch — Kevin Graham, Justin Bench and Tim Elko. None have played a full SEC season as a starter.

“We made it too easy,” Mike Bianco said. “Too many 3-2 counts where we swung at balls, whether it was high fastballs or change-ups in the dirt. We have to be disciplined enough to take those. If we can take some of those pitches, innings change. We’ll go back and watch the tape, but some of those at-bats we’d like to have back. They were non-competitive.”

Ole Miss has been a pot boiling over with confidence since the current sophomores arrived on campus, but there hadn’t been any adversity. Mike Tyson and his punched-in-the-mouth quote comes to mind. UCF was more Bald Bull than Glass Joe. It’s an important week for Ole Miss to settle down mentally.

The Rebels expanded the strike zone, became overly aggressive early in counts and compounded their problems with empty at-bats that piled on top of one another into scoreless innings. The game-two escape didn’t repair anything, as UCF’s early game-three lead swung the momentum and mood right back the other way.

Ole Miss scored in only six of 27 innings in the series and only manufactured runs without a home run three times. The 2 through 5 spots in the Ole Miss order went 7-for-44 (.159) in the series, with Hayden Dunhurst — inserted into the two-hole for game three — the only one of the 12 possibilities in those lineup spots over the series to have multiple hits in a game.

Cliches are there for a reason, and Ole Miss isn’t as good as it looked at times in Arlington or as bad as it seemed against UCF. While the result was the national storyline of opening weekend, the Rebels were just OK offensively in Texas.

The Rebels scored in seven of 26 offensive innings and two of those were ninth innings with the games decided. Ole Miss scored five runs in one inning against Texas Tech and that was it. The Rebels scored in three innings in each of the other two games — Chatagnier hit doubles to begin three of them and his RBI single was the scoring play in another one.

It is an inexperienced team offensively that’s a work in progress all the way around. Bianco admitted Saturday he’s still learning about his team, and it’s a long season. May is more important than February.

But the clock is relatively ticking. The two easiest nonconference weekends are up next before a midweek road series at Louisiana Tech and the start of league play.

The SEC, and SEC West specifically, may be as strong top to bottom as ever, and the order of opponents does have a twist. Ole Miss starts with Auburn and Alabama — the two teams picked next to last and last in the SEC West — before a three-week barrage of Florida, Arkansas and Mississippi State.

Seasons are weird, but, on paper, the Rebels need to get off to a good start before the opponent talent level increases. There’s a bit of psychology to be played now, as Ole Miss lapsed mentally at the plate as well as physically. The Rebels didn’t handle stress well once it actually appeared. It was the first time in a while, so there’s a pass, but it’s still present and must be addressed.

There’s no need to panic and question yet if the pieces exist, but Bianco does have to figure out the puzzle.