OXFORD - Terrico White did some amazing things with the basketball last year, even though he was rushed into the point guard job, a position in which he had little previous experience.

Teams knew it was going to be White; he was clearly the most dangerous player on a team running on fumes at the end.

For all that White accomplished, and his intriguing 6-foot-5 frame notwithstanding, Ole Miss coaches knew his time at point guard was closer to its end than its beginning.

"Oh, Chris Warren is our point guard," one of them told me last March.

Indeed, the 5-10 Warren has come back from major knee surgery with all the speed he had before. Not a step has been lost.

He is capable of changing a game with rapid-fire bursts of scoring as he did Wednesday night against Texas-El Paso.

Warren scored 17 points in the first 15 minutes, then didn't score again until about 68 seconds remained in regulation. But he got a bucket then and scored 11 in overtime, most of them at the free throw line, because the Miners couldn't get it out of his hands.

Clearly, Chris Warren is "the man" at Ole Miss.

Fortunately, White is OK with this, because it takes more than one "man" to win in the SEC.

While Warren had a career-high 32 points against UTEP, White was far from invisible. He had 19 points and five rebounds.

White was 3-for-5 from 3-point range, including two big 3-pointers when Ole Miss stormed back from a 70-58 deficit in the final 5 1-2 minutes.

Warren is "the man" at Ole Miss. White may or may not be "the man" at the next level, but he has the body and skills for a pro future.

He is beginning to shoot better, and that's something the Rebels need with a road trip to No. 6 West Virginia following Saturday's home game against Centenary College.

White had multiple 3-pointers in just one of the first seven games but has had eight in the last three games and is shooting 50 percent behind the arc over that span.

At times this season. it looked like the Rebels weren't working hard enough to get shots for White, perhaps because he wasn't shooting that well.

While Warren and White attract attention, Zach Graham has been the team's most dependable 3-point shooter of late. His 3-pointer from the corner to start overtime helped the Rebels gain a little separation, then keep the ball in Warren's hands to ensure their best free throw shooter got to the line.

Graham was 3-for-5 from the arc and is 14-for-21 - 67 percent - in the last four games.

He and Eniel Polynice bring different strengths to the same position and present Kennedy with lineup options.

The difficulty the Rebels had in guarding UTEP's Derrick Caracter, a transfer from Louisville and a top-flight big man, is reminder of how much ground Ole Miss needs to cover in post defense.

It's also a reminder that this is a guard-oriented team, Chris Warren's team at crunch time.

Parrish Alford (parrish.alford@djournal.com) covers Ole Miss for the Daily Journal. He blogs daily about Ole Miss athletics at NEMS360.com.