What now for Ole Miss after road trip skid? 'Back to the drawing board'
Saturday in Auburn was the punctuation after a long week on the road where No. 22 Ole Miss suffered back to back losses, including a drubbing at the hands of the Tigers on The Plains.
The Rebels fell to No. 13 Auburn, 82-59, for their third loss of the season and to remain winless on the road against Southeastern Conference opponents. This loss followed up a defeat at the hands of LSU on Wednesday in Baton Rouge.
Not much went wright for Ole Miss (15-3, 2-3 SEC) against Auburn after the first few minutes of the game. The Tigers took a 19-point lead into halftime and eventually grew it to as many as 35 before the Rebels chipped away ever so slightly the final 10 minutes.
But it was way too little way too late and Ole Miss first year head coach Chris Beard was left to ponder what is next postgame.
“We came to Ole Miss with a lot of objectives (and one is) to play meaningful games in March. To get there you have to play some meaningful games in January and February,” Beard said. “We made our part of the bargain. I was told it was the first time Ole Miss and Auburn played with both teams ranked. A lot of good going on in our program as we build this thing year one. Obviously, we didn’t take care of our end of the bargain to make it a Top 25-type game.”
After falling out of the Top 25 following the loss at Tennessee earlier this month to open up SEC play, Ole Miss will most assuredly fall out again after going 0-2 this week against an unranked LSU and a Top 15-ranked Auburn.
The glaring issues this week were the lack of care with the ball by the Rebels on offense, committing 27 combined turnovers between both games. The 17 against Auburn was a season high.
When Ole Miss was able to keep hold of the ball in the two games the offense was not there to support it.
Entering the week the Rebels were the top three-point shooting team in the conference at just over 40 percent. But after a 25 percent effort in Baton Rouge, Ole Miss shot just 23.5 percent on Saturday (4-17).
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Ole Miss shot under 40 percent from the floor in both games, finishing each at 37 percent. One glaring issue when it comes to offense is the Rebels are not getting much, if any, support from their bench. Outside of the starting five the scored 18 points to Auburn’s 40 bench points.
“We’ve got to stay the course. We’ve been a good offensive team in a lot of segments of our games this year,” Beard said. “Obviously we weren’t tonight. Starts with taking care of the ball. Doesn’t matter what kind of defense you’re playing against or what your offense is doing or not doing if you’re handing the ball to the other team.”
The the defense was not there in either game for the Rebels. Against Auburn the Tigers won the defensive rebound battle, 19-14, but that was also aided in the fact the home team rarely missed. Auburn shot 58 percent from the floor and was.
Still, the belief by Beard exists in his first-year roster with 13 SEC games remaining, starting Wednesday against Arkansas (10-8, 1-4) at 8 p.m. CT.
“Still got a lot of belief in our guys,” Beard said. “I believe we can play and win games like this. We just have to get back to the drawing board.”
