OXFORD | Look, it was Missouri. I know. That is relevant here.

The Tigers are dead last in the SEC at 7-17 and haven’t had a winning record since joining the league in 2013. In a conference-wide arms race, Mizzou is content taking its shotgun to a nuclear war.

But what Ole Miss did over the weekend is what good teams are supposed to do to the Tigers. The Rebels swept the series emphatically, outscoring Mizzou 25-8 on the weekend including a 10-2 drubbing to complete it on Sunday. A week after Missouri took two from MSU in Columbia, Ole Miss outclassed the Tigers and made more plays, more pitches and squelched the few times Mizzou had chances at momentum.

The Rebels got quality starting pitching, moved runners without home runs and played solid defense including a couple game-saving grabs on Friday. Regardless of opponent, Ole Miss played really clean and really well and shook off what had been four weeks of torment and losing series.

"It was huge and we know the other side of the sweep," Mike Bianco said. "It's a two-game swing... it's just huge."

The big-picture scenario of Bianco’s tenure wasn’t altered this weekend. That’s a conversation about postseason success, and right now Ole Miss is just trying to make the conference and NCAA tournaments. One thing at a time.

It was a good weekend for SEC Tournament positioning. Ole Miss entered the weekend tied for 12th in the league but exits in a tie for ninth with South Carolina and Alabama, two teams who hold the tiebreaker over the Rebels. The top 12 make Hoover, and Ole Miss has a game lead over Kentucky and Mississippi State and a three-game lead over Missouri in the SEC.

While the wins were good, it only kept UM above water and brought on more work ahead. Ole Miss likely needs four wins in its final six SEC games to get on the bubble, and a win at USM this midweek wouldn’t be a bad thing either. In fact, it’s somewhat critical. The Rebels’ 58 RPI is a huge issue, and they only have three top-50 wins on the season, however seven of the final eight games are against top-20 teams, and four of those are on the road.

Only once in the past decade has an SEC team made the NCAA Tournament with an under-.500 league record and an RPI outside of the 30s. That 2014 Texas A&M team had 10 top-25 wins. A trip to Baton Rouge and a home date with Texas A&M will decide if baseball carries into June for Ole Miss.

But, regardless of how that shakes out, Ole Miss needed this weekend for morale and confidence and the mood of the program that’s been in the ringer for most of the conference season. Ole Miss was tied or ahead in the ninth inning four straight Saturday games and lost them all. The toll was evident emotionally and obviously in the standings.

At least for a few days, it was just winning baseball. It was Ole Miss’ first SEC home series to win this season — in four tries. And if there’s a run in these Rebels, it will start with improved pitching.

In Ole Miss’ first 12 SEC games, its starting pitchers had a 6.89 ERA. In the past 12 SEC games, the starting pitching ERA is 3.90. Hunter Elliott has gone six innings or more two straight weeks. Dylan DeLucia has been stable on Fridays, despite a difficult outing this weekend, and Ole Miss has something in Derek Diamond on Sundays as long as there’s a short leash after a time through the order. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.

"That always take a breather off you, when you know you only need to score three or four it takes pressure off to go score eight or nine," Kevin Graham said. "The (recent) starting pitching has been huge. It hasn't always been pretty for those guys, but they keep fighting."

Ole Miss could turn this weekend into a bit of a run toward at least a regional berth, or we could look back and see that it was just the Rebels beating the hell out of a bad team. Bianco hates the question about whether a win is a tipping off point for a streak. It’s useless. There’s no way to know.

But for now, that doesn’t matter. For a weekend, Ole Miss got some oxygen and cleared the cobwebs of mediocrity that had developed most of this conference season. It avoided rock bottom and put some respectability back with two weeks to play.

A group that has won a lot of games over the past seasons showed there’s some life still in there. That’s worth noting and appreciating, no matter what’s to come.