Three observations from Ole Miss basketball’s 60-50 loss to Boise State
Ole Miss dropped to 3-2 on the 2021-22 season with a 60-50 loss to Boise State in its final game of the Shriners Children’s Charleston Classic on Sunday.
What did we learn? Let’s take a look.
Offense still lacking consistency
All offseason Jarkel Joiner was the chosen one to lead the Ole Miss offense and be the heir apparent to Breein Tyree and Devontae Shuler. I myself was one of those high on Joiner, as was head coach Kermit Davis.
Through the Rebels first five games, Joiner has continued to show flashes of elevating his play from a season ago and becoming the leader on offense. But then there are games like Sunday’s where he just struggles.
When Joiner struggles it seems the rest of the team struggles as well. The Rebels went scoreless the final 5:10 of the game, which was part of Boise State’s 21-4 run to close out the game.
“That was one of the most disappointing 20 minutes of basketball since I’ve been coaching at Ole Miss,” Davis said to start his post game press conference. “Our inability to make shots all day. First half it didn’t affect us, second half it did.”
Davis also noted he started seeing the offensive struggles start to affect his team on defense midway through the second half and realized it when Joiner was no longer vocal in the huddle during timeouts.
Rebels are going to struggle against a big lineup without Brooks
Nysier Brooks has been an early breath of fresh air underneath for the Rebels, but when he was not on the court Sunday his absence was felt.
With a little more than four minutes to go, Brooks fouled out and the bigs of Boise State took over the game.
Boise’s 6-foot-10, 240-pound forward Mladen Armus dominated inside during the final 10 minutes, especially once Brooks was on the bench. Armus finished with 11 points and a game-high 13 rebounds — 10 of them on the defensive end of the floor.
“It was big, because (Brooks) was the only guy who could do anything with (Armus),” Davis said. “He just out-physicaled every other big on our team except (Brooks). At least he could defensive-rebound the ball, he didn’t score it very well around the goal, but at last he had a presence inside. The big guy just kind of bullied everybody else around.”
Slow starts becoming a common occurrence
The Rebels are beginning to consistently come out of halftime sluggish and on Sunday it cost them.
After starting fast against Elon on Friday, the Rebels did not have the same energy to begin their game against Boise, though both teams struggled. In the early moments of the first half, both teams were a combined 4-for-17 in the first four minutes.
But only the Rebels continued to stay on the struggle bus to start the second half while Boise managed to find their rhythm on offense. To start the second half, Ole Miss was 3-for-12.
“We’ve been really poor starting the first five minutes of these second halves,” Davis said. “It’s all we’ve been talking about. It would start even in practice, (take) a two minute break, come back and start competitive drills. Just weren’t very competitive tonight early.”
That trend is alarming with the slate of non-conference opponents still to come, including No. 11 Memphis and Dayton. Much work to be done in December before conference play begins with Florida.
