‘Tale of two halves’: Vols give Ole Miss hoops a rude welcome to SEC play
About halfway through the first half of Saturday’s SEC opener, it looked like the Vols were going to run Ole Miss out of Food City Center in Knoxville. However, the Rebels were able to respond and cut a once 12-point first half deficit to just a single possession in the blink of an eye.
But, the Vols overcame early three-point struggles and caught the Rebels napping going into the locker room. Tennessee’s Jahmai Mashack hit a corner three at the halftime buzzer to go up 40-31, and it was all downhill from there for the Rebels.
At the end of the night, Tennessee was exactly what Chris Beard expected them to be. Tennessee was more physical, moved the ball better and controlled the game underneath the basket from start to finish.
The Vols outscored Ole Miss 50-33 in the second half and never looked back en route to Ole Miss’ first loss of the 2023-24 season, a whopping 90-64 defeat.
“I’ll start by just saying this, Tennessee is just really good. I don’t know if (Rick Barnes) would agree with this, but I think they’re a Final Four team,” Beard said in postgame. “You’re literally looking at a team that was literally a basket away from beating Kansas and Purdue. (If they beat them), we’re sitting here as them being the No. 1 team in the country.”
“From our perspective, it was really a tale of two halves. In the first half, we let a three-pointer shooter get away from us at the buzzer. If that doesn’t happen, I think it’s 37-31 at halftime, and we’re holding our own in the rebounding game, think they were up +5 or 6. We played well in spurts in the first half with our toughness against one of the best teams in the country. Second half, completely different side of the coin. (Tennessee) was more physical than us, more competitive, they executed a lot better than we did. Really just kicked us in the second half.”
Ole Miss shot 43% from the floor (23/54), but definitely the biggest story of the night was on the glass, where the Rebels got out-rebounded 47-24, 19-4 offensively. Tennessee also took advantage of 22 second chance points to go along with their 42 points in the paint. After struggling from three early on, the Vols ended up knocking down 11 from beyond the arc.
“We got kicked today. It’s not just the players, it’s us too, the coaching staff and whole organization. You tip your cap when someone outplays you like that. We were trying different things, but if you don’t have the physicality and don’t have just the effort and competitiveness, it doesn’t matter what you do scheme wise,” Beard said.
For Ole Miss, Jaemyn Brakefield led the way with 22 points (7/8 FG), while Jaylen Murray added 11 points to go along with his team-leading eight rebounds. Allen Flanigan’s 10 points came with four assists, but the Vols had 25 of them as a team en route to a season-high 90 point surrendered by the Rebels. On the other side, Jonas Aidoo was the biggest problem defensively, with 24 points and 10 rebounds around the basket. As a team, Tennessee led for all but roughly three minutes of the game.
“Nobody can take away those 13 straight wins, and I think that’s an important thing for any team to string some wins together, because ultimately, you have to win six games in three weekends and win the final game on Monday night. That’s certainly our goal at Ole Miss,” Beard said. “There’s a long ways to get there… so the ability for our team to win some games in a row, it’s positive. Now we’re in SEC play, it all starts over. We’re 0-1 and now we have a few days of practice to get a win on Wednesday.”
