Oxford is eerily silent as the Selection Sunday buzz overtakes the rest of the college basketball.
The Ole Miss Rebels only got so far before a gut-wrenching heartbreaker against Arkansas in the SEC Tournament torpedoed their shot at a possible NCAA Tournament bid.
As a team that lost 12 of their final 13 games of the regular season and finished as the No. 15 seed, the dream was already a bridge too far for the Rebels fans.
Ole Miss's extinguished NCAA Tourney hopes
But the miracle run that Beard led in the four days of the SEC Tournament charged the whole of Oxford with a sliver of hope of being the Cinderella of the season. A 3-pointer, 93-90 overtime loss to No. 3 Arkansas in the semifinal officially pulled the plug on any Selection Sunday hopes for the Rebel Nation.
The only way Ole Miss could have made it on the 6 p.m. ET telecast on CBS was if they had made it all the way through the SEC tourney to earn an automatic bid.
With a 15-19 overall record, there wasn't any hope for the NCAA Tournament anyway. The depressing 10-game skid, the lowest in program history, in the regular season, just made any of those hopes crumble further.
However, neither Beard nor the players let the slightest bit of it get to their heads as they ended up making another historic record — the good one this time.
Ole Miss became the only team in Division I history with a 15th or lower seed to reach the semifinal round of a conference tournament. Not only that, they marked an equally surprising record by not trailing a single second in their first three games against tournament heavyweights in Texas, Georgia, and Alabama.
Chris Beard signed off with a promise of bringing a better product to the table next season. That magical run in Nashville was the only reason Chris Beard’s postseason promise carried any weight.