The Ole Miss basketball programs hitting the reset button this week after tough start to SEC play

No way to go about it but say this past weekend was a tough one to swallow for the Ole Miss basketball programs. Conference play got underway and high expectations were humbled a bit with a pair of losses to Top 10 teams.

Plenty to still play for with 17 Southeastern Conference games remaining for the men, coming off its 26-point loss to No. 5 Tennessee and the women’s team still have 14 games left on its conference slate after an 11-point loss to No. 7 LSU on Sunday.

For the men it was a tough pill to take with another bumpy start to SEC play at the hands of the Volunteers and the team’s first loss of the season. The first 19 minutes of Saturday’s game in Knoxville saw Ole Miss (13-1, 0-1 SEC) go toe-to-toe with Tennessee until two three-pointers in the final 30 seconds of the first half turned the momentum to the home squad the final 21 minutes.

First-year head coach Chris Beard was blunt in his initial assessment of the game in the wake of his first loss at Ole Miss. The Volunteers “kicked” and “whipped” the Rebels, according to Beard.

Now the task is how will Ole Miss respond off the loss when it hosts Florida (10-4, 0-1) on Wednesday at 8 p.m. CT on SEC Network. The Gators are coming off a close loss to No. 6 Kentucky where the Wildcats were nearly upset in Gainesville on Saturday.

A season is not won with one game but a loss could snowball, something Beard is making sure does not happen heading into a two-game homestand this week with the Gators and Vanderbilt on Saturday.

“Nobody can take away that 13 straight wins,” Beard said after Saturday’s game. “I think that’s an important thing for any team, to string some wins together because ultimately you got to win six games in three weekends to win on the final Monday night. That’s certainly our goal at Ole Miss. Long ways to get there, obviously, but it starts with a clear goal (and) a clear vision.

“Now we’re in SEC play. It all starts over. We’re 0-1. A couple days here to practice and try to get our first SEC game on Wednesday.”

For the Ole Miss women’s team, Sunday was another opportunity to break through to the next level of SEC hierarchy.

For three quarters the Rebels (11-4, 1-1) were also matching LSU in competition and effort, even overtaking the Tigers for the lead on a couple occasions. But just like last season’s game against No. 1 South Carolina the chance to show Ole Miss belonged in the elite conversation went by the wayside.

Getting away from their signature ‘dictate and disrupt’ defense allowed LSU to score 50 points in the first half, a first by the Rebels this season. Things returned to normalcy by holding the Tigers to 34 points in the second half but the fourth quarter got away from Ole Miss.

Splitting the first two games of conference play does not put sixth-year head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin behind schedule. She has used a pod-play approach to SEC play in recent years but she is breaking it down even more this year with a one game at-a-time approach.

Next up for Ole Miss is a home game against Auburn (11-4, 0-2) on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. CT before traveling to Starkville to take on Mississippi State (13-4, 0-2) on Sunday at 4 p.m. CT.

Two prime chances to bounce back and leave the first four-game pod at 3-1 and possibly even be ahead of schedule for a Rebels team that had to readjust mid-season due to KK Deans injury.

“Here’s the thing, it is game two (of SEC schedule) so really this was awesome for us,” McCuin said after Sunday’s game. “We had been on a little streak and we hadn’t had adversity so we’ve been celebrating them a lot. ‘You guys are great, great, great.’ So, we kind of need this to say, ‘Okay, this is where the hole is in the boat and we can’t just patch this hole. We got to fix this hole.'”