It was easy to overlook a hot start to Chris Beard's second season at Ole Miss for a couple of reasons. The Rebels also started with a bang in 2023-24, standing at 15-1 this time last year before going 5-11 and missing the NCAA Tournament.
Then, there's the simple fact that, even after a 14-2 start, Ole Miss entered midweek action just eighth in the NET among SEC teams, which relegated the Rebels — fair or not — to a certain level of anonymity in the nation's toughest league.
But you can't sleep on the No. 21 Rebels now, not after their 74-64 upset victory at No. 4 Alabama on Tuesday night. It marked Ole Miss' first-ever road win over a top-five opponent and snapped a streak of 16 straight losses against top 25 opponents.
It was the type of victory that should serve as a warning shot to the rest of the league and the country that the Rebels are for real.
Malik Dia led the way with 23 points and 19 rebounds, and Ole Miss put the clamps on the nation's highest-scoring offense. The Rebels won the turnover battle 21-7 and held the Crimson Tide 27 points below their season scoring average of 91.1 points per game.
For a team that ranked a dismal 141st in KenPom's defensive efficiency metric last season, it was a head-turning effort that validated the Year 2 improvement under Beard which is now undeniable. When the teams met last year, Ole Miss led 42-39 at halftime before surrendering 64 points in the second half of a 103-88 loss. It was a game that exposed just how big the gap was between Ole Miss and the SEC's elite.
That gap has closed in a hurry.
What makes Ole Miss' defensive improvement so impressive is that they actually lost the two rim protectors from a team that ranked No. 7 nationally in blocked shots at 5.8 per game last season.
But Beard has turned the departures of shot-swatting 7-footers Moussa Cisse and Jamarion Sharp into a case of addition by subtraction. What the Rebels lack in interior intimidation, they more than make up for with agility and tenacity.
Case in point: Dia. The Belmont transfer, who began his career at Vanderbilt is built like a defensive end but plays with the athleticism of a wide receiver. He was unstoppable against the Crimson Tide, bringing a level of physicality and skill that outclassed any counters produced by a deep Alabama team.
The Crimson Tide entered with the nation's fifth-longest winning streak at eight games and had yet to score fewer than 88 points during a 3-0 start to SEC play. Their final tally on Tuesday was eight below their previous season-low of 72.
Given Beard's track record of quick turnarounds, it's no shock the Rebels now stand with Auburn as the league's only unbeaten teams in conference play. He built Division II Angelo State into a power in his second season, took Little Rock to the NCAA Tournament in his lone season there and had Texas Tech in the Elite Eight during his second season with the Red Raiders.
Things were also trending up at Texas during his second season there before an ugly off-court issue interrupted what seemed like a dream partnernship between Beard and the Longhorns.
Beard's dismissal there led him to Ole Miss, and it was fair to wonder how long it might take for Beard's magic to take hold. The Rebels have not been beyond the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2001 and have been to the Big Dance just four times since then.But if there was any doubt over whether building Ole Miss into something special might be too much for Beard to handle, Tuesday night should erase that.