Dunks, Star is (Maybe) Born and 3-0: Ole Miss’ Bahamas trip couldn’t have gone much better
If it’s really not how you start but how you finish, Ole Miss basketball’s trip to The Bahamas couldn’t have gone much better.
The Rebels left out on July 31 for several games in Nassau and Atlantis, and they returned home on Friday. They were a perfect 3-0 on their trip, but not before overcoming their first bout of adversity of the 2022-23 campaign.
Ole Miss was already down Daeshun Ruffin and Robert Allen, as both are still recovering from significant ACL injuries suffered last season. Ruffin didn’t travel. Allen did.
But the hits kept coming.
Ole Miss held 10 practices before the trip, and Josh Mballa, a transfer forward from Buffalo, and Robert Cowherd, a true freshman guard, were both injured, too. They’ll be out for nearly two months.
Cowherd tore a meniscus and underwent surgery. Mballa went down with a knee sprain. Now-fifth-year head coach Kermit Davis said they’ll be out until mid-September at the earliest.
“Really unfortunate for both Josh and Robert,” Davis said. “They both had made really good progress this summer leading up to our trip to The Bahamas.
“We expect both to be back before official practice begins.”
Ole Miss also started slow once games finally tipped off.
The Rebels trailed the Bahamian national team after the first two quarters of play on Monday. But Ole Miss came out swinging in the second half, shooting 47.7 percent in the back half and ripping off a late 11-0 run to seal the game for good.
“We played a good team,” Davis said. “A lot of those guys are pro players who play on their national team. I thought when we came out, we didn’t compete really hard, we were a little nervous.
“We played three freshmen quite a bit, but I’m just really proud of how those guys played in the second half.”
Ole Miss being short-handed opened up even more on-court opportunity for emerging players, including sophomore guard James White, who was thrust into a greater role in the absence of Ruffin and Cowherd.
Ruffin is a former McDonald’s All-American and Top 50 recruit, and he was taking over as the face of the program prior to injury. Additionally, Davis previously told the Ole Miss Spirit Cowherd was one of the team’s very best outside shooters.
“James, he’s grown,” Davis previously told local Ole Miss media. “He’s well over 6-5, he’s gained like 19 pounds. He’s 202 pounds. He just lives in the gym. I think James has made a big step athletically and from a maturity standpoint, working his tail off.”
White had the first of back-back-to-back 20-point games.
He finished the tour averaging 23.7 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game, and he led the team ins coring all three games. He shot 64 percent from the field.
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White was at his best in a 25-point performance in an 88-70 win over Discount Distributors Rockets in game two.
He nearly had a triple-double, with nine rebounds, seven assists and one steal. He made 11 of his 18 field-goal attempts (all from within the three-point line) in 34 commanding minutes.
“The biggest thing for James is down to five-on-five, being able to play-make, really defend in a team setting,” Davis said.
“He’s making progress in all those different things. We think James is going to have a really good year.”
White could be on breakout alert.
The 6-foot-5, 190-pound White appeared in just 18 games as a true freshman last season, and he averaged 6.8 points while making 17 of 39 total field goals.
“We had just talked about it in our meeting how Matt (Murrell) went through some struggles as a freshman, some struggles that Josh Mballa went through with a national championship team at Texas Tech, and then James Shite struggles last year,” Davis said.
“I said ‘James, wouldn’t it have been great a year ago to know then what you know now?’ He said, ‘Coach I would’ve been in a different place.’ Guys have to go through things. There’s this thing about James White that never deterred him, and now he’s got this air when he plays with this confidence.”
Safe to say, the Ole Miss offense showed plenty of encouraging early signs.
The questions surrounding the fifth iteration of Davis’ Rebels are plentiful. Chief among them is where the scoring is going to come from outside of the exciting, and potentially dynamic, back-court duo of Ruffin and Murrell.
“Hopefully we’re going to create offense through our defense and we’re going to be able to push it up in transition to get easy baskets,” Davis said.
And they did just that in The Bahamas, including a host of high-flying dunks. Ole Miss opens its season November 7 against Alcorn State.
