Ole Miss is the cinderella of college football, and its head coach the darling of college football fans.

Freeze — whose journey to the top of the Southeastern Conference is as unlikely as a fairy tale — is a crown jewel on The Grove, where the speed limit is “18” for the only other name that carries more weight in Oxford.

Freeze came to Ole Miss from Arkansas State, where he was the head coach for one season. Prior stints include NAIA Lambuth and Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis.

Known for a high-powered offense and relentless defense, Freeze has built the Rebels into a power. But a lot of what he learned came away from the gridiron.

Before the success came as a football coach, Freeze coached girls basketball at Briarcrest. His teams reached seven consecutive state championships, winning four. Freeze’s record as a basketball coach? 305-63.

“It definitely stretched me,” Freeze said in a recent New York Times interview. “I didn’t really know anything about the game of basketball. So I had to get out there and learn the X’s and O’s. But you still have to find ways to motivate and teach.”

It was on the hardwood Freeze became obsessed with strategy. Due to a lack of depth, he’d often substitute every two minutes. His team became known for a taxing full-court press and creating easy shots in transition.

“I didn’t know much, but I knew how to teach them to play hard defense,” Freeze said. “That’s what we built the whole thing on. And we tried to create tempo. Imagine that.”

Freeze also taught geometry at Briarcrest and was the dean of students. He’s always been a champion of coaching at the high school level.

“You’re going to be depending on kids who may not be the most talented but need to play with an enormous amount of heart and passion,” Freeze said. “Sometimes I think college coaches who have always coached talented kids don’t quite have that experience.”

Freeze relates to his players. You can see it in how he’s built a program at Ole Miss, how he coaches his players.

It’s true now and it was true as a high school girls basketball coach.

“We would run through a wall for him,” said Jada Mincy a former player, who went on to play at Ole Miss.