Let’s take a trip back in time, shall we? Don’t worry, we won’t be traveling far, just back to the 2011 season.

That was the year the Ole Miss Rebels hit rock-bottom.

A little context: Ole Miss won eight games in 2009, and appeared to be a sleeper team in the SEC West in 2010 following the arrival of former Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli. Instead, the Rebels finished the year with a dismal 4-8 record, including a 1-7 mark in SEC play.

However, the Rebels’ rapid decline didn’t reach its breaking point until 2011, as the team limped to a 2-10 record — including an 0-8 record against SEC opponents and a 20-point home loss to Louisiana Tech. Then-head coach Houston Nutt was promptly fired at season’s end, and current head coach Hugh Freeze was brought in to rebuild the Rebels from square-one.

Three games into his third season at the helm of the Ole Miss program, Freeze has elevated the Rebels from woeful SEC bottom-feeder to a top 10 team in this week’s Associated Press Poll.

How did he do it? He approached the rebuilding process one day at a time, a process he still preaches in 2014.

“To me, every day has a life of its own,” Freeze explained to the media in his weekly press conference Monday. “Every play in a game has a life in its own. Today is a life, tomorrow, too.”

Practicing patience wasn’t always easy for Freeze and the Rebels, but the head coach truly rebuilt the program one step at a time.

Prior to the start of the 2012 season, Freeze brought in the first piece of the puzzle in the form of juco-transfer Bo Wallace to take over as the team’s starting quarterback. Ole Miss managed a 7-6 season with Wallace at the helm, capped by a victory over Pitt in the BBVA Compass Bowl.

Freeze leveraged the added exposure of a handful of competitive SEC contests, packaged with a bowl win to end the year, and attracted one of the nation’s top recruiting classes to Oxford, headlined by No. 1 recruit Robert Nkemdiche. By the start of the 2013 season, the Rebels began growing up right before our eyes.

Players like Nkemdiche, tackle Laremy Tunsil, wideout Laquon Treadwell and others began making an impact as freshmen, helping Ole Miss win a tough road game against the Texas Longhorns and a thriller at home over then-No. 6 LSU. Still, Ole Miss dropped five of eight SEC contests in 2013, including an overtime loss against Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl.

The Rebels won a bowl game for a second straight year, and once again lured a top-flight recruiting class to Oxford to continue the program’s growth under Freeze’s leadership. Ole Miss is now a perfect 3-0 in 2014, outscoring opponents by a combined score of 132-31 in those games.

Rather than overhauling the entire program, Freeze developed the players he inherited in 2012 and recruited the players he felt would fit well in his program, not just the ones with the most talent. He rebuilt the Ole Miss program gradually, using each accomplishment to help the Rebels grow just a little bit more every day.

One of the players Freeze inherited in 2012, senior cornerback Senquez Golson, has played a major role in Ole Miss’ rebuilding process. He reflected on how far the Rebels have come since Freeze’s arrival in 2012 via Twitter on Monday, the start of Ole Miss’ bye week.

The Rebels are now a top 10 team, and are considered among the same class of teams as traditional powers like Alabama, Florida State, Oklahoma and others. Some might consider the rebuilding process complete, implying that cracking the top 10 represents the summit of the mountain Ole Miss has climbed since 2012.

However, Freeze’s bunch has much loftier goals in mind, and the Rebels continue to take the process one day at a time.

“We haven’t done anything yet,” Wallace said following Freeze’s time at the podium Monday. “We’ve won one SEC game, meat of the schedule is coming up. We’re playing good ball but nowhere close to perfect, and that’s what we’re trying to be. We can stand back and look at first three games, but we have to bring it every single day.”

Every single day — that’s the approach Freeze has instilled in his players. Ole Miss will continue to take that approach throughout its bye week, as well as the following week when it turns its attention to a date with the Memphis Tigers on Sept. 27.

Following their showdown with Memphis, the Rebels begin a stretch of seven SEC contests in an eight-game span, including four games against fellow SEC West teams ranked in the top 10. Freeze is content with where his team is today, especially in comparison to where it was when he arrived in Oxford three years ago.

But what about tomorrow?  As far as the head coach is concerned, his program will get back to rebuilding.

“The joy is in the daily enjoyment of things. Just two-and-a-half years ago this program was winless in this league, so in that amount of time our kids and people around this program and our administration deserve a lot of credit for being recognized for that,” Freeze said Monday. “Is it deserving of that? I don’t know, but we’ll find out with the games to come.”