The Ole Miss Rebels opened conference play in Norman, Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon and the Sooners crashed the Patton Pinkins coming out party.
The true freshman had a career high of 14 heading into this
one and finished as the game high scorer with 25 points. He hit four of the 10 made threes by the Rebels on the afternoon and led all players in minutes played with 30. Unfortunately for Pinkins and his team, Ole Miss shot 38% from the field while OU shot 51%.
Playing on the road in the SEC in any sport is a tough task and shooting poorly isn’t an anomaly. However, in coach speak, defense travels. Effort travels. Chris Beard’s defense has been his calling card as a coach and his team relies on offense created by that defense.
The Sooners are similar to the Rebels from last season, they excel at taking care of the ball, averaging just 9 turnovers per game and they only turned it over seven times in this one, limiting transition opportunities for Beard’s boys. In fact, Ole Miss had five transition points in the game.
The staple of a Chris Beard defense is not giving up the middle of the floor. They want to funnel the ball to the sideline and get traps on the baseline, denying passes back to the middle. It’s a complex system for a simple concept: Keep the ball out of the paint.
Ole Miss did not do that against Oklahoma. The Sooners managed 36 points in the paint, the lone stat that this team can look at for the loss. 36 points in the paint absolutely points towards the 51% shooting on the afternoon.
On offense, Malik Dia was the only other Rebel in double digits as AJ Storr struggled mightily, shooting 3-14, and Ilias Kamardine was held to just seven shots in the contest.
It will be back to the drawing board as Ole Miss plays host to Arkansas and Missouri next week.
