Ole Miss men’s basketball dropped their first home game of the season yesterday to Texas A&M.
The Rebels had a packed house with 10,008 fans in attendance — marking the second largest crowd at the Sandy and John Black Pavilion. The game also cemented guard Matthew Murrell’s achievement as the Ole Miss all-time leader in games played in program history.
Ole Miss defeated then No. 4 Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala. holding the Crimson Tide to less than 70 points for the first game this season on Jan. 14. On Saturday, the Rebels, hobbled by a slow start and poor offense down the stretch, lost to Mississippi State 84-81 in Starkville in overtime.
Texas A&M entered this game following a victory against LSU. Though the Aggies dropped games against Alabama and Kentucky — both top-tier SEC teams — in previous weeks, they were without standout guard Wade Taylor IV, who averages 15.4 points per game.
Tonight, both teams started slow. Rebels guard Murrell hit a three on the opening possession, but after that, the Rebels failed to get anything going. By the first TV timeout, the Rebels only led 5-3.
Towards the middle of the first half, Ole Miss finally got their shots to drop. Guards Sean Pedulla and Jaylen Murray and forward Devon Barnes hit three-pointers, and forward Malik Dia dunked a lob in transition to wake up the crowd. By the eight-minute mark, the Rebels were in command with a 21-13 lead.
At halftime, the Aggies were only down seven, 33-26, despite mediocre numbers across the board on offense. Guards Zach Phelps and Hayden Hefner led the Aggies with six points apiece.
Dia scored the Rebels’ first eight points after the break. But the offense looked stagnant overall without much off-ball movement or meaningful drives to the basket — the same flaws which plagued them last week against Mississippi State.
Aggies forward Pharrell Payne had some strong finishes around the rim, and the elusive Wade Taylor kept the Rebel defense on its heels. By the 12-minute mark, the Aggies were only down five, 41-36.
Pedulla started to get hot, burying a pair of threes and a floater. On the other side, guard Manny Obaseki scored seven straight, including a contested three-pointer that quieted the crowd.
Though Ole Miss’s offense remained slow, the Rebels refused to let the Aggies catch up. Dia kept scoring, and forward Jaemyn Brakefield hit a big three in transition. With a little over a minute left and the Rebels winning 60-54, the game should have been in hand. But that was when the collapse began.
Murray made a sloppy pass, which led to an Aggie fast break. Rather than allow guard Jace Carter to score the easy layup, both Murray and Brakefield made a bad situation worse by wildly attempting to block the shot. Murray fouled Carter; Brakefield was called for goaltending. Carter missed the free throw, but on the next possession, the Rebels committed another turnover, this time on a ten second violation
The Aggies failed to score, but the drama was not finished. With thirty seconds left, Pedulla turned it over on an inbounds pass, and Brakefield, once again, was called for goaltending. Now the Rebs were only ahead 60-58.
Murrell was fouled and made both free throws, but the Aggies came right back down and scored. Then Barnes was fouled on the inbounds pass; he missed on the front end of the one-and-one, and Obasekj nailed a three-pointer with 12 seconds left to put them up 63-62 — the first time the Aggies had led all night.
Ole Miss head coach Chris Beard elected not to take a timeout, and the Rebels offense, as has been a trend recently, looked out-of-sync and uncoordinated. Brakefield missed a runner, and both teams were still scrabbling for the ball as time expired.
“We didn’t finish the game like you have to finish the game.” Beard said in a post game press conference. “You hope that a painful night like tonight, maybe there’s some silver lining in the end. It’s a long season. If we can learn from this, we can become a better team, finishing off a game when we have a lead big enough where we should win the game.”
The Aggies emerged with the come-from-behind win with seconds to go. Ole Miss dropped what should have been a victory.
The Rebels will hit the road to face No. 22 Missouri in Columbia, Mo., on Saturday, Jan. 25. Tip off is set for 5 p.m. and can be streamed on ESPN.
