Marshall Henderson drives the ball past Alabama guard Levi Randolph during the Alabama game Wednesday. Photo: Ignacio Murillo, The Daily Mississippian.
Ole Miss will look to keep pace in the Southeastern Conference standings as it heads to College Station, Texas, to take on the Texas A&M Aggies. Ole Miss (17-11, 7-7 SEC) is currently tied for fourth in the SEC, while Texas A&M (16-12, 7-8) sits one game back.
Ole Miss snapped a four-game losing streak on Wednesday with a 12-point win over Alabama. That win allowed Ole Miss to stay ahead in the battle for the four seed.
“Winning is a lot better than the alternative,” head coach Andy Kennedy said. “We had a three-game home stand, and we went one for three. That, certainly, wasn’t the goal. It just feels good to win.”
Ole Miss turned in a dominant display on the glass, as the Rebels outrebounded Alabama by 16.
“I have yet to know what the ceiling is, quite frankly,” Kennedy said. “When we rebound, this team has a lot of basketball in front of it.”
Ole Miss is second to last in the SEC in rebounding percentage at 48.1 percent; Texas A&M is only slightly higher at 48.6. That should bode well for Ole Miss in trying to win the rebounding battle.
The Aggies are led in scoring by former Ole Miss player Jamal Jones. The junior guard is scoring 12.6 points per game and shooting 38 percent from three. Jones was on the 2011-12 Ole Miss team but was released due to a violation of team rules.
Aggie point guard Alex Caruso leads the SEC with 4.6 assists per game; he’s third on the team in scoring at 8.4 points per game.
For Ole Miss, sophomore guard Martavious Newby will look to continue his hot streak. Newby put up career highs in points and rebounds against Alabama with 15 and 10, respectively. He is coming off a hand injury that sidelined him for six games, but look for Newby to start against the Aggies, as he played 31 minutes and started the second half against Alabama.
In the last three games, Ole Miss has outscored its opponents by 26 points with Newby on the floor; with him off the floor, Ole Miss has been outscored by 32.
Look for Ole Miss to also play a smaller lineup more frequently, as Kennedy started sophomore forward Anthony Perez in the frontcourt against Alabama. Perez is one of the tallest players on the team at 6-foot-9, but he is skinny and Kennedy prefers him as a wing.
But with the struggles of Ole Miss’ big men and Perez’s surge — he leads Ole Miss in offensive rating in SEC play — Kennedy decided to play him inside.
“It puts him in a tough spot because I’m asking him to know a lot of different things,” Kennedy said. “With Anthony at the four, he’s a matchup problem, but I also need him some at the three.”
Playing Perez at the four allows the Rebels to have another shooter on the floor and creates better spacing for the offense. That is the matchup problem Kennedy wants to create. But the problem would lie on the defensive end of the court where Perez might get hurt in the paint.
But, to combat that problem, Ole Miss plays a lot of zone defense. However, in the last two games, Ole Miss has used its man-to-man defense more and more. Kennedy is employing a familiar tactic in the man defense.
Ole Miss switches nearly every ball screen while playing man. This takes away any advantages that teams would gain from a guard, like Trevor Releford of Alabama, driving off of a pick-and-roll. This is the tactic Kennedy used in last year’s SEC tournament that helped the Rebels win the championship.
The major problem is that when Ole Miss switches, it leads to junior forward Aaron Jones guarding Releford on the perimeter, or junior guard Jarvis Summers defending Patric Young of Florida in the paint.
The game will tip off at 5 p.m. 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
