Ole Miss didn’t rewrite its season in Auburn, but it did finally exhale.
After 10 straight losses, weeks of coming up short in every possible way, the Rebels walked into Neville Arena and came out with something they hadn’t felt in a long time: relief.
Not joy, not momentum, not a seasonal turning point, but just the simple, steadying feeling of a win that actually held.
“We’ve been in a lot of games like the one you saw tonight,” Ole Miss coach Chris Beard said after Saturday night’s game. “Tonight, we came out on top.”
That’s really what Saturday night was about. Ole Miss has spent the last month watching close games slip away in the final minutes, usually with one or two possessions that went sideways. This time, when Auburn made its push, the Rebels didn’t fold. They didn’t tighten up. They played clean basketball and finally got a much needed win.
Auburn jumped ahead 48-40 early in the second half, the kind of stretch that’s buried Ole Miss lately. But instead, the Rebels answered with a 13-3 run, capped by a Patton Pinkins three that felt more like a deep breath than a dagger.
“We executed the game plan,” Pinkins said. “We were just hooping on offense, moving the ball, cutting and that helped us get hot.”
It was the first sign that maybe this night would be different. And it was.
The late-game possessions finally swung Ole Miss’ way. Ilias Kamardine’s three with under three minutes left gave the Rebels a little cushion.
Then came the play that sealed it: Kamardine working left, crossing back to the top of the wing, James Scott slipping perfectly into space, and the alley-oop dunk that pushed the lead to 78-71 with just over a minute left. It wasn’t flashy. It was just solid, confident basketball at a time when Ole Miss has had very little of that.
None of this changes the record. None of it erases the 10 losses that came before it. But ending a streak like that matters. It resets the temperature around the team. It gives players something to point to besides frustration. It makes the next practice feel a little lighter, the next game a little less heavy.
Sometimes a win is just a win. For Ole Miss, this one was something smaller and maybe more important: a reminder that the bottom doesn’t have to keep falling out.
“We haven’t started talking specifically about (the SEC Tournament) yet. We’re just trying to stack good days right now,” Beard said. “We’ve had some pretty good games over the last month. We just didn’t come out on top against some of the best teams in the country. I think what’s obvious to everyone who watched tonight is our guys haven’t quit. We’re going to keep giving ourselves a chance. We’ve got two more opportunities in the regular season, then we’ll play in Nashville for an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. That’ll be our objective.”
