Ole Miss misses Matthew Murrell as it drops another SEC game in loss to Missouri

The Ole Miss men’s basketball team was without its best scorer against Missouri on Tuesday night but Matthew Murrell was not missed for offense.

The junior guard’s presence on the defensive end of the court was a bigger loss against a red hot shooting Missouri team that beat Ole Miss 89-77 inside SJB Pavilion. The defeat was the Rebels eight in the last nine games and seventh out of their first eight Southeastern Conference games.

Entering the game the Tigers (15-5, 4-4 SEC) were shooting around 20 percent from three-point range their last five games. On Tuesday they shot 53.3 percent and hit 16 out of their 30 attempts from beyond the arc.

Ole Miss (9-11, 1-7) got off to yet another hot start but the Tigers clamped that down, shooting 60 percent from long range. Overall, Missouri shot 55.4 percent (31-56) and the Rebels could do nothing when it came to defending a shot.

That is where not having Murrell on the floor hurt the Rebels as he sat out the game after suffering a right knee injury at Arkansas last Saturday. No structural damage was found and the injury was diagnosed as a mild MCL sprain.

“Probably we missed him more was just defensively. Just defensive schemes,” said head coach Kermit Davis. “We scored plenty, 77. Missouri’s a high-powered offense and they’ve scored. They hadn’t shot it like that in a long, long, long time and they did. …I think more than anything tonight we missed his maturity level on the defensive end. Kind of in game plans and some different things.”

Ole Miss scored 70 points for only the third time in SEC play this season.

Offense was not an issue as 77 points should be enough to win a game, especially at home, but Missouri just could not miss.

The rarity of scoring at least 70 points in SEC play is what is the bigger issue and what has been the cause of ringing the alarm since the season hit late December.

Daeshun Ruffin was the lead scorer for Ole Miss with 18 points and was one of three Rebels to finish in double figures. Jaemyn Brakefield scored 15 points and Tye Fagan finished with 12. Freshman guard Amaree Abram played over 21 minutes with Murrell unavailable but scored only eight points while the other freshman guard TJ Caldwell finished with five points in over 24 minutes of court time.

Offense was an issue inside the paint once again in certain aspects as Ole Miss missed half of its layup attempts (8-16), but did score 28 points in the paint off other shots.

It is what it is with the offense at this point and what it is is not a winning formula in the SEC.

Turnovers was another major issue for the Rebels and it was a key in the margin of defeat.

Ole Miss committed 16 turnovers which the Tigers went on to score 20 points off of. Carelessness with the ball has become a problem for the Rebels on offense.

When a team is hitting 16 shots from three-point range there does not need to be any help given such as providing an extra 20 points on top of it when trailing by 15 points or less.

But that is what Ole Miss did and could not get out of its own way, literally at times.

“We had some really live ball turnovers. I mean just right out in front, gave (Missouri) easy baskets,” Davis said. “You couldn’t guard the live ball turnover. Seemed like it was right in the front of the court that led to an easy bucket.”