No. 17 Ole Miss finds a different way to score in win over Queens
The long ball was not working for No. 17 Ole Miss on Saturday. So Chris Beard’s team had to look at other ways to score.
The Rebels were successful but it took a while in their 80-62 win over Queens, giving them their fifth straight win heading into Christmas break.
In the victory Ole Miss attempted 27 three-point shots, making only seven of them for 26 percent success rate. The deep ball is always going to be a green light for Beard’s team and he was not disappointed with the looks on Saturday.
Sometimes the ball just will not go in.
“We did not play our better game of the year, but I thought our guy’s hearts were in the right place for the most part,” Beard said post game. “We took a lot of threes tonight. From where I was sitting they were good, open shots. We just didn’t make a lot of them. How do you win a basketball game on a night when the shots going down? You got to find another category.”
With the deep ball not going in the Rebels (11-1) went to the higher percentage shots, outscoring the Royals (7-6) 42-24 in the paint.
Knowing they were not able to score from outside the perimeter Ole Miss went inside in the second half, which allowed it to get into some foul situations for Queens and also finally put the game out of reach.
“It’s a fine line. We’re a three-point shooting team. There’s no doubt about it. It’s one of offensive weapons,” Beard said. “The ball wasn’t going for us great tonight. …You got to do something on night where the shots aren’t going down. What did we do? We took care of the ball to get more shots than they did. Then we made them turn it over, which gave them less shots than we did.”
The Rebels defense caused 21 Royals turnovers and scored 24 points off of them.
Sean Pedulla led all scorers with 25 points, scoring 18 of them in the second half. The senior transfer put the Rebels on his back in the final 10 minutes of the game.
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“We took a lot of threes but I think in the second half and the last 10 minutes in particular we really tried to get into the paint,” Pedulla said. “Play off two, kind of draw some fouls and I think that really opened things up for us.”
Ole Miss got Matt Murrell back on the court
After missing the previous three games due to a lower back injury senior guard Matt Murrell made his return to action.
While not starting he put in 23 minutes of work and finished with 10 points, six rebounds and three assists. There a bit of a pitch count on Murrell but he provided exactly what Beard was wanting out of him in the first game back in nearly three weeks.
“That was kind of the story of the game for us, to get Matt to 22 minutes tonight,” Beard said. “He just picked up where he left off. …He was kind of on a minute restriction tonight so we kept him right where the doctors wanted us to. That’s hard to do when you haven’t played in a while. To come out there and basically kind of play well.”
Dre Davis scored 11 points and Jaylen ‘JuJu’ Murray added 10 more points to join Murrell and Pedulla as the only Rebels to finish in double figures.
Ole Miss gets another week off before traveling to No. 21 Memphis on December 28 (1 p.m./ESPN2) to close out non-conference play.
