Ole Miss and the SEC
We are well into conference play in the SEC which has been everything that we as fans hoped that it would be. Every team except for #1 ranked Auburn has been handed a loss in the first five games and three of those wins were by five points or less with their most recent contest going down to the wire against a hard nosed #23 Georgia team in Athens 70-68. Nine SEC teams are ranked in the top 25 and five games into the season, each team has had the opportunity for at least one résumé building win for the NCAA tournament. With the level of coaching in this conference, getting a win against even an unranked opponent is more difficult than it would seem
One of the the things that we are seeing as conference play goes on is the emergence of lesser known players as serious parts of teams that have the opportunity to be competitive for the SEC title this year. On that list of players is junior forward for the Ole Miss Rebels, Malik Dia. The 6’9″ Murfreesboro native is in his first year at Ole Miss after spending one year at Vanderbilt and Belmont and has become a key player in the rotation for Chris Beard. Dia provides size and length to a pretty undersized rebels team but also has an advantage as a ball handler against opposing forwards.
Meet Malik Dia
This season, Dia is averaging. 9.4 points and 6.3 rebounds per game in just under 19 minutes this season. When you watch him play, the one thing that can be picked up on is his confidence on the court. In almost any game, he is capable of going on a run by himself, especially if the opposing team starts jawing. This quality has caused Dia to make some mistakes on the court earlier in the season which has more than likely led to his limited minute average for Ole Miss .
However, Dia seems to have made adjustments in his control of errant play on the court and earned the trust from Coach Beard in SEC play as his playing time average jumped from 18 min/game to over 25 min/ game in the past five games. In those five games, Dia has been the leading scorer for the Rebels in three of them including a 23 point 19 rebound explosion against Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In these three games, Dia has not just been a reactive forward, scoring off of offensive rebounds or easy buckets credited to dribble drive and dish from guards; he has largely been given the opportunity to put a defender on an island and attack the basket.
Dia has great ball handling skills and a quick first step that allow him to create early advantages on dribble drives. With a wide frame at 250 lbs, he can leverage defenders to keep them in a disadvantageous position once he puts them there. One of his most notable skills is his ability to finish and finish through contact which was really highlighted in his first big game of the year against a very talented Arkansas Razorback team where he went right at the starting forward for Arkansas Adou Thiero, going off for 21 points and eight rebounds in a big win on the road. In this game particularly, the potential for an NBA career became very apparent.
He followed this performance by putting up 19 and seven against LSU in Oxford, Mississippi. This led up to the Rebels’ biggest challenge of the season when they took on the #4 Alabama Tide on the road. In this game, Dia was able to finish against the Alabama front-court benefiting early from dribble drives from the Ole Miss guards. Late in the game though, he would finish isolation plays at the rim and hit a few jumpers to put the game out of reach. It wasn’t just that Dia was in the right place at the right time in this game, he is skilled enough to make the opportunities successful and his performance is the only reason that his team left Tuscaloosa with a win.
After three games as the most dangerous player for this Ole Miss team and not recording a single turnover in those three games, Dia was obviously the focus for the Mississippi State Bulldogs when the two teams collided in Starkville. The Bulldogs forced Dia into four turnovers and just 18 min of playing time with Coach Beard opting for forward Jaemyn Brakefield to fulfill the forward role in the game. The Bulldogs overcame the Rebels in overtime 84-81 to hand the Rebels their first loss in SEC conference play.
Upcoming for Dia and the Rebels
Malik Dia will need to get back to his old ways for Ole Miss in the contests that are ahead for the Rebels as they take on four top 25 teams in their next five games beginning Tuesday, January 21st as they welcome #13 Texas A&M to Oxford. With a coach that is very much a player’s coach, I would bet money that Coach Chris Beard sat down with Dia in the film room to correct what happened against Mississippi State so that Ole Miss can continue a successful SEC campaign and perhaps a deep push into the tournament. The level of success that this team achieves hinges on Malik Dia being the player he can be for the Ole Miss Rebels.
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