LOOK: Beard says ‘time to talk about Ole Miss’ after win at No. 4 Alabama

by:Ben Garrett•about 11 hours•

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GhTdFxpXMAACW9r — Ole Miss forward Malik Dia (Photo credit: Ole Miss Basketball/X)

Ole Miss knew it had a legit NBA prospect in Malik Dia back in the spring.

Dia, though, took some time to adjust. He’s spending one final college season at Ole Miss following previous career stops at Belmont and Vanderbilt.

He wasn’t an every-game starter initially. But even when he was he was a secondary scoring option. Ole Miss rosters 10 seniors but only six returners from last year’s 20-win team. The Rebels are designed for shared offensive wealth. Early on the Rebels were mostly paying out to Sean Pedulla, Dre Davis and others.

Dia isn’t taking a back seat anymore; if he ever really was.

He’d already earned ‘real trust’ from second-year Ole Miss head coach Chris Beard for his contributions to Ole Miss’ hot start to SEC play. But Dia displayed to a national audience his next-level potential in a 74-64 win over No. 4 Alabama in Tuscaloosa Tuesday night.

Dia scored a season-high 23 points and grabbed a career-best 19 rebounds.

The No. 21 Rebels (15-2, 4-0 SEC) secured their first win over a Top 5 team on the road in program history.

“Proud of our players for a lot of reasons,” Beard said in his postgame press conference. “Top of the list, I do believe Alabama is one of the best teams in the country. This is our second year at Ole Miss. We came here to build a program that can compete with teams like this. Tonight we obviously did more than compete. We were really concerned about their offensive rebounding. I think we held them to four offensive rebounds. One of those was late.

“We wanted to take care of the basketball and we did. Low turnover game. We wanted to have balanced scoring (and) got five guys in double figures. If you’re going to win a big-boy game, this was a first-place game, then you’ve got to have some special performances.

“Obviously Dia the basket opened up for him tonight. He really rebounded the ball. Lots of good things from our angle.

“It’s early. We’re just trying to kind of win the next game on the schedule. But I think not recognizing what kind of team we just beat tonight … we’ve got a lot of players in there that really, really want to win. They’re starting to understand that there’s a way to win.”

Dia was 11 for 21 from the field and recorded two blocks.

Ole Miss had been winless in its previous 34 road games against Top 5 teams. Alabama head coach Nate Oats had won 83 percent of his home games in six seasons as Alabama head coach.

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The Rebels recorded their first Top 5 win since 2001 and in Tuscaloosa since 2015. Ole Miss is perfect through four SEC games for the first time since 2012-13.

Dia has led Ole Miss in scoring in three straight games. He’s averaging 21.0 points and 11.3 rebounds over that stretch. Alabama (14-3, 3-1) entered the night with the NCAA’s top-scoring offense. The Tide had scored 70 or more points in 53 straight games.

The 64 points were a season low. Alabama had 21 turnovers, its most in a game this year. Ole Miss is one of just two SEC teams still unbeaten in conference play.

“Nothing but respect for Nate and this team,” Beard said. Ole Miss is up to five Quadrant 1 wins. The Rebels had three all last season. “They were in the Final Four for a reason last year. They’re certainly one of the best teams in college basketball.

“Maybe it’s time to talk a little about Ole Miss. Most of the national scene didn’t give Ole Miss much of a chance. Our players believed we could be successful in this game and that’s what we did.”