WATCH: Ole Miss basketball has needed its ‘next-game approach’ during a three-game skid
Ole Miss is the first Chris-Beard-led team since Texas Tech in 2020-21 to lose three straight games in a regular season.
The Red Raiders made the NCAA Tournament anyway, which is an eerily-similar path his Rebels will try to follow with less than a month remaining in the 2023-24 regular season.
Ole Miss is 18-6 (5-6 SEC) on the year after its latest loss at Kentucky. However, the Rebels are still currently projected by ESPN as the second team of the ‘Last Four In’ the NCAA Tournament. Ole Miss has been to the tournament just nine times in its 100-plus-year history. The Rebels last appeared in 2018-19.
“We’ve had a tough stretch, no doubt about it,” Beard said Thursday. He was holding his weekly press conference with local media. “We’ve lost five games. Four of those five were to ranked teams. Three of those four games against ranked teams were on the road.
“We obviously need to play better on the road. The Texas A&M game was a great win for us. We gave ourselves a chance at South Carolina; came down to a call/no-call at the buzzer.
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“The other games? We’ve just got to play better. We have to find more consistency. Specifically on defense, we have to do a better job of guarding the ball. It’s not just one player on our roster. It’s multiple players on our roster that have had many possessions in a game where we’re not guarding the ball like we can or should.”
Ole Miss has seven games remaining, including two against Missouri.
The Rebels host the Tigers Saturday at 7:30 p.m. CT. Also to come is a road trip to in-state rival Mississippi State on Tuesday, followed by back-to-back home showdowns against No. 11 South Carolina and No. 15 Alabama.
“I think different coaches handle skids differently,” Beard said. “So, how do you handle a three-game losing streak? I wouldn’t even know we’re on a three-game skid, just like I wouldn’t know we’d won three in games in a row.
“It really is a ‘next game’ approach around here.”
