Lane Kiffin sensed his team needed a boost — something to reenergize Ole Miss after Auburn scrapped away at a lead that was at one point 21 points in the first half.

The Rebels just kicked a short field goal, after weighing a fourth-down attempt from the Tigers’ 5-yard line, to push their lead back to seven early in the second half. Ole Miss led, 31-24, with 9:50 to go in the third quarter, but Auburn was on a role offensively. The Tigers scored on four of their last five drives and were thriving on the ground.

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So Kiffin wanted to make sure Auburn’s offense didn’t have a chance to answer. The Ole Miss coach surprised Auburn with an onside kick after the field goal, and the Rebels recovered to gain an extra possession. Nine plays and 54 yards later, Ole Miss was in the end zone, and its lead was back to two touchdowns.

“That one sucked,” Auburn linebacker Owen Pappoe said. “…That one kind of hurt.”

The onside kick took everyone in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium by surprise during Ole Miss’ eventual 48-34 win. It didn’t seem like the time of game or the situation to attempt one, but Kiffin believed the gamble could pay off.

Auburn was lined up in its typical deep kick return formation, and Ole Miss didn’t tip its hand. It wasn’t until Rebels kicker Jonathan Cruz’s measured approach and sly kick that anyone on the Tigers’ side of the field realized what was happening.

The ball bounced 10 yards downfield, with the four closest players to it when it crossed the 45-yard line all wearing powder blue. Ole Miss pounced on the ball, taking over at its own 46-yard line with 9:45 to go in the third.

“It was a huge play for the players to make the play,” Kiffin said. “Looks awesome on film…. We were struggling at that point in the game, so we got the ball back in the game, so I don’t think that’s what people were anticipating in the game in a high-scoring kind of game. We got to that drive, so let’s do it…. Obviously, it helped us in the game a lot.”

Ole Miss made the most of its shocking deployment of an onside kick at that juncture. It forced Auburn’s defense to quickly return to the field — after it had just been on for a 13-play Ole Miss possession. It was a quick turnaround for the Tigers’ defense, and one that was only made more difficult by the Rebels’ use of up-tempo offense.

Ole Miss marched 54 yards over its next nine plays, all runs, with Alabama native Quinshon Judkins capping the bonus possession with a 5-yard touchdown run to make it a two-score game. Auburn was able to get back within a touchdown on Robby Ashford’s second touchdown run of the game with 2:30 to go in the period, but the extra possession — and ensuing score — allowed Ole Miss to keep Auburn at arm’s length for the remainder of the game.

Simply put: Kiffin’s gambit paid off, delivering one of the most consequential plays of the day.

“Flat out, I mean, they got us on that,” Auburn coach Bryan Harsin said. “That was a good call by them…. Plays like that — there’s O and D plays and stuff like that, but on special teams, there’s only small opportunities for plays like that. And that was a good call by them. They got it. Created momentum for them, and obviously we didn’t play it well enough. We’re gonna go back and look at it.

“There’s answers for it, there’s things you work on, but in that moment right there, you’ve got to do it. And they did it better than we did it in that moment right there. And so what you do is you take that, you learn from it, and, moving forward, you’ve got to expect those things at all times, which you talk about it, you prepare for it, but it happened in the game and it was a momentum-changer.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.