The 2013-14 Ole Miss men’s basketball season officially tipped off Friday night in Tad Smith Coliseum as the new look Rebels opened up with a victory against Troy, 69-54.
The Rebels got off to a crisp start, but the offense had its stagnant moments. Junior guard Jarvis Summers provided the majority of the offense for the Rebels in the first half with 22 points and junior forward Aaron Jones provided 10 first-half rebounds. The Rebels went into halftime with the momentum, but came out of the locker room a little sluggish.
Summers opened the half with consecutive misses from the floor and offense was hard to come by until sophomore point guard Derrick Millinghaus began to pick up the scoring load. Ole Miss head coach Kennedy feels that his team did some great things tonight, but needs to clean some things up.
“Offensively, we just seemed like we were out of rhythm,” said Kennedy. “We played good in spurts, but shooting 35 percent from the field and 56 percent from the foul line are unacceptable numbers.”
Jones provided multiple opportunities for the Rebels to score by grabbing eight offensive rebounds and a total of 13 rebounds in all. The Rebels collectively won the rebound battle by 15, which resulted in 23 additional field goal attempts.
Summers career night got the team over the hump as he finished with 28 points on 10 of 19 shooting. Millinghaus also finished with 13 points on 5 of 15 shooting.
With both Summers and Millinghaus picking up the team with senior guard Marshall Henderson was sidelined because of his suspension, Kennedy is optimistic that his bench will take the next step in providing that extra offense needed in order for the team to be successful in this brief stretch without Henderson.
“When we went to our bench with Snoop (Ladarius White) and Anthony Perez and some of the guys that I really think are going to take that next step for us, we really struggled and as a result, we had a hard time maintaining separation,” Kennedy said.
