Ole Miss season vindicates Cutcliffe
By By Will Bardwell / staff writer
Nov. 29, 2003
STARKVILLE Most Ole Miss fans would have laughed two months ago at the idea of a 9-3 season.
Not David Cutcliffe.
The No. 17 Rebels' victory over the Bulldogs, the team's seventh in its final eight games, completed an astonishing turnaround for both Ole Miss and its head coach.
Two months ago, Cutcliffe was in danger of losing his job. After Thursday's win, he may have laid claim to being the Southeastern Conference coach of the year.
Often criticized as too conservative to succeed as a head coach, Cutcliffe fell under the heaviest fire of his career after the Rebels' 49-45 loss to Texas Tech on Sept. 27. Ole Miss dropped to 2-2 with the meat of its schedule looming ahead.
But just as quickly as they were written off, the Rebels rebounded from the slow start to become the conference's biggest surprise. A team often chastised for late-season slumps went 3-1 in November and climbed as high as No. 15 in the national rankings.
Ole Miss did more than just compete. The Rebels ran off six straight wins in October and early November, their longest winning streak under Cutcliffe, and tied for the SEC West title, which is their first championship of any kind in 41 years.
That loss to the nation's No. 3 team had the critics openly wondering whether Cutcliffe's Rebels would again fade down the stretch, especially with a match-up against Mississippi State just five days away.
The answer to such curiosities came in the form of Ole Miss' first shutout win since a 3-0 victory over Memphis in 1999.
Though the Rebels missed out on a trip to the conference championship game by virtue of LSU's win over Arkansas on Friday, Ole Miss is still likely headed to its first January bowl game in more than a decade.
Ironically, it was Cutcliffe's ardent devotion to the Rebels' running attack, the source of so much criticism, that brought Ole Miss its best season in years.
The season's end brings the Rebels their first nine-win regular season since 1990 and gives Cutcliffe a reprieve from his critics.
Not that he cares.
