Ole Miss striving for 'consistency' after up and down start to open up SEC play
Chris Beard is four games into his first run through Southeastern Conference play as the head coach of the Ole Miss men’s basketball team and is starting to get a good sense of where the program is.
Last season it took Ole Miss six games to secure its first SEC win. This season it took only the second game in a bounce-back after the Tennessee throttling. Last year Ole Miss needed the entire regular season to win 12 games but this year the Rebels needed only the first 12 games to do it.
The turnaround is happening and maybe faster than even Beard anticipated after inheriting a basketball program that was considered one of the worst in the SEC. But these are still baby steps in the right direction as the first two weeks of conference play has shown.
Going loss, win, win, loss is a SEC sandwich that No. 22 Ole Miss (15-2, 2-2 SEC) does not need to be eating every four games after dropping its second SEC road loss of the season at LSU on Wednesday.
“I think we’re like every other team in the country. We’re still kind of a work in progress,” Beard said during his postgame press conference in Baton Rouge.
“I think we’ve had some good moments this season. I believe that we can play with any team in the country but we’re really striving for consistency and tonight you kind of saw that.”
One area of the inconsistency Beard referenced was the disappearing act of the best three-point shooting team in the SEC. Entering into Wednesday’s game Ole Miss was averaging 40.1 percent from beyond the perimeter but against the Tigers it shot 25 percent.
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“It’s just more the case of the ball just didn’t go in the basket,” said Ole Miss guard Brandon Murray. “I don’t think LSU did anything to particularly change a certain way about how we play. It was just the ball wasn’t going in. …The ball was getting up, so.”
To take a big-picture look at the loss at LSU the consistency issue was even more cut and dry for Ole Miss.
In the first half the Rebels committed nine turnovers and were a little sloppy with the ball on offense. The defense picked up the slack as LSU scored only scored eight points off them.
Flipping things to the second half the offense cleaned up, committed only one turnover the final 20 minutes and even cutting the double-digit deficit to six points within the final six minutes but the Ole Miss defense did not do its part, giving up back-breaking three-pointers down the stretch.
“First half, way too many turnovers. Give LSU credit, they have a pressure defense.” Beard said. “We just didn’t take care of the ball. Second half we corrected that. …While we’re doing that our defense didn’t help our offense. In the first half our offense didn’t really help our defense and second half when we got our offense going a little bit we just couldn’t get our defense to get stops when we needed them.”
A win at LSU would have been preferred, obviously, but even more so given the fact Ole Miss travels to No. 13 Auburn ( on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. CT and into another difficult road environment.
