Ole Miss men's basketball sees season end at SEC Tournament and turns its attention to the offseason
The 2021-22 season came to an end on Wednesday in Tampa, Fla., as Ole Miss falling to Missouri in the opening round of the SEC Tournament.
A 72-60 loss to the Tigers encapsulated all of the issues the Rebels experienced and all the challenges they dealt with throughout the season. Another weak second-half effort spelled their doom.
Now, with the season over the offseason arrives with a large amount of questions that need immediate answers with none the least who will be the head coach come this November.
The season is just hours old and a decision on Kermit Davis’ fate will not be known probably until next week at the earliest. Early indications to the Ole Miss Spirit have been that Davis will be here another season, but athletics director Keith Carter could decide to make a change. Time will tell.
Moving past Davis is the product on the floor and getting it improved.
Injuries were the biggest hindrance for a Rebels team that won only four conference games. Robert Allen went down with a season-ending injury early in the non-conference slate followed by Daeshun Ruffin’s season-ending injury midway through conference play last month.
Add in Jarkel Joiner’s absence due to a back injury that required surgery and then a battle with the flu. Joiner has not fully recovered from the back procedure, according to him and Davis, but Joiner’s production was inconsistent all year despite being the team’s leading scorer for the entire season.
Allen and Ruffin are coming back and possibly Joiner unless he decides to pursue a professional career in the states or abroad.
Nearly the entire team returns despite Nysier Brooks and John McBride, but even a returning lineup is in need of repairing if the product on the court is going to improve.
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Davis acknowledged as much following Wednesday’s loss, pointing at the transfer portal as a resource they will heavily rely on this summer.
“We can’t miss in the portal. We can’t miss,” Davis said. “We’ve got to go and find guys that are physical, that like to compete and can do it in this league.
Last year we swept Auburn and Kentucky and we won the fourth-most games in this league. You think about both of those teams now have a chance to win the national championship. So you can get well in a hurry and we’re going to get well in a hurry. This is not what we came to Ole Miss to do and you can get well in a hurry.”
Along with hitting the transfer portal, Davis has gotten four commitments from the high-school ranks. The most recent coming from four-star point guard Amaree Abram. The Humble, Texas prospect chose the Rebels over finalists DePaul, Louisville, Maryland and St. John’s on Saturday via his Twitter.
This season looked bleak from the start of conference play to Wednesday night, sealing a third straight season of the Rebels not reaching the NCAA Tournament a year after losing to Louisiana Tech in the first round of the NIT.
A quick turnaround may be harder to do in practice than in saying it, but Davis — or whoever is in charge of the program — will be tasked with trying to get better in a hurry and resucitate a program that barely has a pulse.
