First things first: Friday, in Atlanta, Chris Beard’s Ole Miss Rebels try to achieve what no Ole Miss team has ever done before.

Should Ole Miss defeat Michigan State, the Rebels will advance past the NCAA’s Sweet 16 and into Elite 8, something that has never happened. Indeed, Ole Miss men have only reached the round of 16 once, and that was in 2001 when Arizona ended the Rebels’ dream in San Antonio. Remember?

Rod Barnes was the National Coach of the Year and should have been. Ole Miss, which finished with 27 victories, went on a 16-0 run early to take a 12-point first half lead over the favored Wildcats. And then Arizona, coached by Lute Olsen and led by future NBA great Richard Jefferson, took over and eventually won by 10.

That Arizona team would go on to defeat Illinois in the regional final and then Tom Izzo and Michigan State in the national semifinals before losing to Duke in the championship game.

Beard might not win Coach of the Year this season, but he should have been a finalist. He has taken a team picked to finish ninth in the SEC, the best league in the country by far this season, and put it in the national spotlight. And he has done it with a singular inside-the-paint presence in Malik Dia.

“Chris is just a terrific coach,” retired and much respected college and NBA coach Tim Floyd told us on this week’s Crooked Letter podcast. “He reaches his players and he does it on an individual basis. To a man, his guys are playing their basketball right now and that’s the mark of a great coach.”

Floyd, as this writer, has been amazed that Beard has guided the Rebels this far with such an acute rebounding weakness. Ole Miss ranked 15th of 16 SEC teams in rebounding margin. The Rebels have been out-rebounded by 4.5 rebounds per game. There are no readily available statistics on how many teams have reached the Sweet 16 with such a rebounding deficit, but you can bet on this: There haven’t been many.

The Rebels make up for it in other ways, mainly by protecting the basketball when they have it and taking it away from opponents when they don’t. Ole Miss led the SEC in turnover margin and it wasn’t that close.

In Michigan State, the Rebels face a team that does well in all phases, especially rebounding. The Spartans out-rebounded their opponents nearly 10 per game. If this sounds like a match-up problem for Ole Miss, well, yes, it certainly is. Again Dia, a muscular 6 feet, 9 inches, is the Rebels’ inside presence. Michigan State counters with three bigs that tall and taller. All of them rebound. All of them can run the floor.

Actually, Michigan State would be a matchup problem for most teams. It has been that way for a long, long time where Izzo is concerned. He is an old school basketball coach whose teams have been marked by two constants: rebounding and defense. They pound the boards and they guard.

Izzo’s record speaks loudly for itself: more than 700 career victories (the most in Big 10 history, surpassing Bobby Knight), 11 Big 10 regular season championships, eight Final Fours, four times National Coach of the Year, and an incredible 16 Sweet 16s.

Forget rebounding, this is the matchup that deserves the biggest exclamation point: Ole Miss, the program, has been to one other Sweet 16 in its history. Izzo, the coach, has been to 16 himself!

None of that prior history really matters when they take the floor Friday night. Kermit Davis Jr., Beard’s predecessor at Ole Miss, proved that in 2016 when he took Middle Tennessee to the Sweet 16 for the first time ever in 2016 and stunned Izzo and Michigan State in one of the NCAA’s most shocking upsets ever. Should Beard and Ole Miss knock off the Spartans, it would be nowhere near that huge an upset. Indeed, Michigan State is just a 3.5-point favorite.

Looking for an early clue on the ultimate outcome? Watch Dia. Where Ole Miss is concerned, he is the key. Floyd, who has watched the Rebels closely all season, has noted that Dia’s effectiveness is often dictated by his early shooting. If he makes baskets early, watch out. If he is off early, he sometimes seems to disappear.

Says Floyd, “When Dia is on, he is as good as any big in the tournament.”

For the Rebels to make history Friday night, they must have Dia at his best.

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