Ole Miss basketball finds its shooting touch with 75-64 win over Eastern Washington

A shooter, a shooter, my kingdom for a shooter.

After a shooting night that made James Nesmith roll over in his resting place, where the Ole Miss basketball Rebels hit 24% from three, 36.8% overall and – hold your breath – 48% from the free throw line in their opening win against Alabama State, something had to give against Eastern Washington in their next outing, the second game of the Chris Beard era.

Eastern Washington was up next and things did indeed get better with the Rebs’ shooting touch finding the range more often than the opener.

But Eastern was not a willing participant in a Rebel cakewalk. In fact, they were peskier than one would like if your colors are Red & Blue. Neither team would give in and neither team could produce a significant run.

At the 10:00 mark of the second half, 6-8 freshman F Rashaud Marshall had a layup and a breakaway dunk to give the Rebs a 54-51 advantage.

The Eagles, 0-1, were outrebounding the Rebs 32-21 at the time.

But Ole Miss got the spark they needed from Marshall with another layup and Guard Allen Flanigan with bracketing buckets to give the Rebs their first breathing room at 60-52 with 7:51 to go.

The Flanigan and Marshall Show tacked on two more buckets to make it 64-54 and then Matthew Murrell and Jaemyn Brakefield got in on the action to stretch the lead to 68-54 with 4 minutes to play.

From there, it was a matter of how much the Rebels would win by. The Eagles went down swinging, but in the end, they did indeed go down.

Flanigan basically took over the game at the end, finishing the night with 29 points in the 75-64 Rebel win.

The Rebels ended up shooting 29-61 (47.5%) from the floor and 14-19 (73.6%) from the free throw line – a vast improvement from the opener.

RELATED: Eastern Washington, Ole Miss’ second non-con foe, has a story Chris Beard respects

After the game, Ole Miss Coach Chris Beard had mostly pluses but some negatives.

On the crowd: “I’m very grateful for the crowd tonight. I know out students and a lot of our fans are headed to Georgia for the football game, but I appreciate the ones who were here.”

On Marshall’s play: “I’m very proud of him. He is making the adjustment from high school to college and doing everything the right way. He’s the first one in the gym and he works hard to hone his craft. He gave us a spark tonight and is earning more and more playing time. He is also a great teammate.”

On Flanigan: “We ask a lot of Allen and he delivered tonight. He was very aggressive on the offensive end. He was dialed in. We need him to rebound better but he had a good night offensively.”

On Ole Miss’ team shooting: “I think in the long run we are going to be a good shooting team. Tonight was certainly better than the opener. I am not really worried about our shooting from what we have seen and charted in practices. I also think we have some composure and poise. That was a good team we played tonight and we had to do good things to beat them.”

On Ole Miss being outrebounded 38-29: “They are a good rebounding team but we have to do better. It is a concern and something that will be addressed immediately in practices. We need everyone on the team to rebound too, not just the bigs. Eastern missed some threes and there were some long rebounds we should have gotten and didn’t. Guards have to rebound just like the big guys.”

On knowing his Ole Miss rotations: “That’s a work in progress. We are not even close to figuring that out yet. We are looking for guys who are consistent and guys we can trust. It’s going to be a few more weeks before we have that down pat as a staff.”

On Ole Miss freshman Jacob Gazzo’s absence: “Jacob is on leave due to an illness. It is nothing disciplinary and we hope to have him back soon.”