Ole Miss men, women hoops experience sweetness. What’s next?

• It won’t take that long to repeat if these programs maintain the stability they appear to have.

How sweet it’s been.

Could it possibly have been a better March for Ole Miss men’s basketball coach Chris Beard and women’s coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin? The pair led their squads to the Sweet 16 in the same year — a first for the Rebels. 

The answer, of course, is “yes.” They could have gone farther. Both coaches are trying to change the expectation in Oxford on what’s possible.

McPhee-McCuin has done it twice in three seasons now, and that changes the trajectory she’s on as a coach.

Once is an isolated incident, twice is a trend.

Ole Miss fans would dearly love to see national relevance for men’s basketball become a trend.

The Sweet 16 is not the mountaintop, but it’s at least the scenic overlook parking lot that the Rebels hadn’t seen in almost a quarter century. Rod Barnes’ run in 2001 was their only other trip.

It won’t take that long to repeat if these programs maintain the stability they appear to have.

Leadership is not the only element to dictate stability, but it’s a big part.

The Mississippi schools, when a coach gets hot, are always looking over their shoulders at potential suitors.

McPhee-McCuin inherited a program with a proud tradition that, except for a blip on the radar under Carol Ross, had been dismal in the post-Van Chancellor Era.

McPhee-McCuin didn’t have a winning season until her third year, and didn’t have an NCAA bid until her fourth.

Now she’s had her ladies in March Madness four-straight seasons and in the Sweet 16 in two of those.

She had hit an interesting gray area as far as outside interest. A blue blood program or a rich(er) and larger school in a rebuild isn’t looking for a coach who only makes the tournament.

They’ll look harder at a coach who has found her way to the Sweet 16 multiple times.

Adapting to change

Beard’s story is different.

When his second Ole Miss season ended, Beard’s wrap-it-up assessment was like many others delivered in similar circumstances.

Only one team ends smiling.

Beard talked about the Rebels collectively, not individually, even bypassing a question about Sean Pedulla, whose individual efforts were so key for this team in so many games.

“Nobody in the country when the season started thought we’d be in the Sweet 16 the second year at Ole Miss. These guys had their own expectations,” he said.

Fortunately, in this regard, teams change during a season. No one stays the same. Ole Miss played some of its best basketball at the end. There was a blowout loss at Florida in the finale, but before that home wins against Oklahoma, an NCAA Tournament team, and No. 4 Tennessee. Then in an SEC Tournament when they were already comfortably in the NCAA field, the Rebels defeated Arkansas, another team that changed in a good way during the season, and had a shot to beat NCAA No. 1 seed Auburn in the final seconds.

What Beard didn’t talk about Friday night, with any detail, is the future.

He did point out the excitement around campus and Oxford and said, “Ole Miss basketball isn’t going anywhere.”

Ole Miss is well-positioned with facilities, administrative support, coaches salaries and SEC membership.

The Rebels, though, can’t outrun their meager history until someone makes the Sweet 16 noteworthy but less than a euphoric event.

As at most places, fan interest through many seasons has been aligned with team success.

If you build a program, they will come.

Flipping the script

Ole Miss can flip the script, but it will take a coach committed to giving the program time to get that done.

Maybe that’s Beard.

At Texas Tech, he had the famous run to the NCAA championship game that everyone remembers, but in five seasons he made the tournament three times and was positioned to make it again in 2020 when the tournament was cancelled.

He had the Red Raiders in the Elite Eight in 2018, the year before the championship run.

When he left it was for Texas, his alma mater, not a lateral move.

There are plenty of places he could move from Ole Miss, places with more history, and his name in job conversations will grow now that he’s rebuilt not only one program but two.

Beard was hired at Ole Miss following his brief Texas tenure that ended after his arrest on an assault charge against his fiancee.

This is his second-chance job. Possibly, that makes him pause in consideration of a next move.

He shouldn’t be held to that pause forever. From any direction, loyalty in college athletics isn’t what it used to be, and if he starts losing grumbling will start, and donor support will be jeopardized.

Ole Miss AD Keith Carter has shown he’ll back his coaches.

As in “real life” coaching moves can happen for any number of reasons.

The best hope for fans is that the coach on the move can say he or she left the program better than they found it.

McPhee-McCuin and Beard can both say that.

Hopefully down the road they’ll be able to say a lot more.