Ole Miss (11-9, 3-5 Southeastern Conference) at Vanderbilt (18-3, 5-3)
When: 5 Central
Where: Memorial Gymnasium, Nashville, Tenn.
How to watch: SEC Network
How to listen: 94.9 The Fan
Net rankings: Vanderbilt 13, Ole Miss 83
Fresh off a home beat-down of Kentucky, 18th-ranked Vanderbilt gets an unexpected home game on Saturday when Ole Miss comes to Nashville.
Last week’s winter storm decimated Oxford, Miss., and with Ole Miss shutting down campus until Feb. 8, the Southeastern Conference office decided on Friday to more this contest (originally scheduled for Oxford) to Nashville, with the Mar. 4 game scheduled for Nashville to now be played in Oxford.
The Rebels haven’t played since falling 72-63 to Kentucky in Lexington last Saturday. Vanderbilt had little problem with Kentucky in Nashville two days later in an 80-55 win in which it never trailed.
The Commodores haven’t been without adversity, either. Coach Mark Byington slept in the George Huber Center—Vanderbilt’s practice facility—on Monday night after his power was knocked out by a winter storm. The next evening, Vanderbilt announced Duke Miles, its second-leading scorer at 16.6 points per game, wouldn’t play against Kentucky.
That left Vandy, already without guard Frankie Collins, down to one true guard in Tyler Tanner, who was great on Tuesday, scoring 19 points to go with five assists and four steals.
Between the hits to the backcourt with Collins and Miles, and three dreadful defense games in which Vanderbilt allowed 80 points to Texas, 98 to Florida and 93 to Arkansas, Vanderbilt needed to both slow other offenses down and particularly, win the rebounding battle, its Achilles’ heel in that three-game skid. That shouldn’t be an issue against Ole Miss, which gets out-rebounded 36.3 to 35.8 on average.
Tuesday’s rebounding success was in part due to a bigger lineup, with Vanderbilt starting 6-foot-7, 245-pound AK Okereke in place of the 6-foot-2 Miles. Okereke pulled four rebounds and blocked two shots before fouling out in 21 minutes.
Vanderbilt also added more size off the bench when a pair of freshmen—6-foot-6, 215-pound Chandler Bing and 6-foot-11, 257-pound Jayden Leverett posted season-highs in minutes (26 and six, respectively), with Bing swatting two shots and scoring a career-high 11 points.
Ole Miss’s best players are AJ Storr (previously of St. John’s, Wisconsin and Kansas) and former Commodore Malik Dia (who spent his freshman season at Vanderbilt. They average 13.9 and 13.7 points, respectively. Dia leads the Rebels in rebounding (6.7) and blocks (1.2).
Point guard Ilias Kamardine, a former French pro playing his first year of collegiate hoops, leads the Rebels in minutes (30.2), assists (4.1) and steals (1.2).
It’ll be the second of Ole Miss’s four-straight road games and by the time it travels to Texas on Feb. 7, the Rebels will have played six of seven games on the road. They’re 2-3 in true road games this year, those being victories at Georgia (97-95 on Jan. 14) and Mississippi State (68-67 on Jan. 17). Ole Miss also fell 76-62 to NC State in Greensboro, N.C., on Dec. 21, a game played about 75 miles from the NC State campus.
Keys to the game
1. Find the right pace. The second-half Commodores against Kentucky bore little resemblance to the run-and-gun team that’s routinely scored 90 or more points and played games with possession numbers well into the 70s for most of the season’s first 2 1/2 months. So it was weird watching the Commodores run the shot clock consistently into single digits on Tuesday.
Some that was also likely to protect Tanner, who’s listed (perhaps generously) at 6-feet tall and 175 pounds. Since the start of SEC play, Tanner has played between 33 and 37 minutes in each game. All of those have come without Collins and two without Miles.
On the other hand, Vanderbilt also a 20-plus-point lead most of the second half, in addition to being in the bonus much of the period, had something to do with it as Vanderbilt.
Either way, Vanderbilt got what it wanted at the end of the evening. But the Commodores also weren’t their normal shooting selves (32.1% in the second half), either, and weren’t built to survive that kind of game. A slower pace also could play into the hands of the Rebels, whose opponents average 18.1 seconds a possession (312th in the country in tempo, per KenPom.com).
It’s a weird spot for Vanderbilt; it feels like the grind-it-out second half against Kentucky isn’t the way to sustain success, but if the ‘Dores again find themselves in a situation like they did on Tuesday, it could be the right call.
2. Avoid foul trouble. Now we get to the copy-and-paste section of our game previews and though people are probably sick of hearing it, it doesn’t make it less a concern.
Good news, Part 1: Tanner, since drawing four fouls in four of Vanderbilt’s first seven games, hasn’t drawn more than three since. He may be the most indispensable player in the country due to his spectacular play and Vanderbilt’s injury situation, and he needs to keep that up.
Good news, Part 2: Ole Miss’s opponents have fouled just 353 times in 20 games, so, the Rebels aren’t the biggest threat here.
The hard truth: More often that not, it hasn’t mattered whether other teams draw many fouls or not, the Commodores can’t seem to stop committing them. Devin McGlockton (5.2 fouls per 40 minutes, per Ken Pomeroy), Bing and Jalen Washington (4.9), Okereke (4.7) and even the sparingly-used (at least until recently) Leaverett (8.2) and Mike James (4.2) have had issues.
Vanderbilt can survive foul trouble to perhaps one or two players aside from Tanner, but unfortunately the margin for error everywhere for everything once Miles went out again.
3. Keep Dia and Storr from going off. Dia, who got 22 at Memorial a year ago, would probably love nothing more than to show out in his hometown against his former team. As for Storr, he’s scored season-highs of 26 and 27 in two of the Rebels’ three league wins.
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