What looked like a season-altering win slowly turned into crippling loss as the Ole Miss basketball team fell 83-82 in double overtime to the Auburn Tigers on Tuesday night.
The Rebels built a 19-point lead with a balanced scoring attack and good defense, but were unable to muster any offense after Breein Tyree fouled out with just over five minutes left to play.
Pearl’s team crawled back into the game with Tyree off the court and eventually fought back to force overtime. The Rebels didn’t score a field goal in the final five minutes of the game.
“Craziest game I’ve seen in a long time,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said after the game.
The Rebels mounted a comeback of their own in the first overtime, as Devontae Shuler hit clutch bucket after clutch bucket en route to a career high 26 points. But Shuler’s late-game heroics weren’t enough, as Ole Miss fell 83-82 in double overtime to Auburn.
“You lose Breein Tyree for the last 15 minutes of the game, that’s hard. That’s hard for our team,” Davis said.
Blake Hinson took the final shot, a miss from the top of the key as time expired. Davis had the opportunity to call a timeout with possession and nearly nine seconds left, but elected to have the ball taken down the court to attack the Auburn defense.
“You can’t settle at the end of these game, you can’t settle,” Davis said. “You have to drive the ball. We settled a few times.”
The Rebels looked like they’d flipped the switch and returned to the form that was expected before the season started coming off the win at Georgia and handling a nationally ranked squad the way they did for most of this game, but this loss simply highlights the team’s major weaknesses while somehow also showing what success this team could have had.
The Rebels move to 10-10 overall and 1-6 in the SEC with a trip to Baton Rouge to face LSU on Saturday.
“We don’t look like a 1-6 team,” Davis said. “We don’t feel like one and we don’t play like one, but we are one.”
