Aaron Jones (34) goes up for a shot past Missouri players during Saturday’s game. Photo: Aditya Khare, The Daily Mississippian.
Ole Miss will travel to Georgia to play for third place in the Southeastern Conference in a second straight road game. The teams are tied for third in the conference, behind Florida and Kentucky.
Ole Miss (16-8, 7-4 SEC) is coming off another last-second loss, as Trevor Releford of Alabama sank a three to beat the Rebels on Tuesday night. It was the third loss of the season for Ole Miss that saw the opponent make a three with less than a second on the clock.
Georgia (13-10, 7-4 SEC) is fresh off of a beat down on Mississippi State. Georgia trailed early, and that caused Georgia head coach Mark Fox to empty his bench – he played 13 players in the first half. Georgia trailed 22-8, and Fox went to his bench, which includes freshman Kenny Paul Geno, a native of Booneville. The emptying of the bench snapped Georgia out of its funk, and they went on to win 75-55.
Georgia is a surprise at third in the SEC; the Bulldogs finished the nonconference schedule at 6-6, which included an 0-3 mark in the Charleston Classic. But at 7-4 in SEC play, Georgia has upset Missouri on the road and Arkansas and LSU at home; Georgia is 11-2 at home this season.
Two guards score in double figures for Georgia, as Charles Mann gets 13.7 and Kenny Gaines gets 11.6 points per game. The third leading scorer could be a matchup problem for Ole Miss. Six-foot-eight forward Nemanja Djurisic can step outside and knock down threes, as he shoots 48.1 percent from behind the arc.
Georgia is slightly above average in the SEC in rebounding. The Bulldogs are fifth in the conference in rebounding percentage, sixth in offensive rebounding percentage.
Neither Ole Miss nor Georgia is great defensively. Ole Miss allows the most points in the SEC, but that has a lot to do with Ole Miss’ faster pace. The Rebels are eighth in defensive rating at 100.6; Georgia is ninth at 101.3.
Georgia is a fringe RPI top-100 team. Currently, the Bulldogs sit at 101, according to WarrenNolan.com. An Ole Miss victory on Saturday would knock Georgia down, but the Bulldogs could potentially finish inside the top 100.
Ole Miss’ RPI sits at 62; the Rebels are 12-2 against teams outside the RPI 100. But both of those two losses came on the road in conference play to Mississippi State and Alabama. Next week will be the big opportunity week for Ole Miss as they host two teams in the top 10 in RPI.
Last year, the only time Ole Miss played back-to-back road games in the SEC was against Missouri and Texas A&M. The Rebels lost both of those games. Since the 2011-12 season, Ole Miss has played back-to-back road SEC games three times; Ole Miss is 0-6 in those games.
The Rebels will look to end that trend, as they play Georgia in game two of this two-game road stretch. The game will tip at 3 p.m. from Stegeman Coliseum in Athens, Ga., and can be seen on FSN.
For continuing coverage of Ole Miss men’s basketball, follow @Tyler_RSR and @thedm_sports on Twitter.
— Tyler Bischoff
tfbischo@go.olemiss.edu
