Ole Miss remains in the SEC Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament

The Arkansas Razorbacks had to wait the longest to play at the Southeastern Conference Tournament, and a little rust from a almost weeklong layoff showed.

“Arkansas made the plays down the stretch. Early on, he set the tone for us by being able to make shots”. “I was trying to play hard for my team. We’ll tape them up and roll them out there and hopefully play better than we did in our first outing in Fayetteville”.

Three Tigers _ Jordan Barnett, Kevin Puryear and Terrence Phillips _ scored 15 points each in a losing effort.

The Razorbacks defeated the Rebels, 98-80, on February 18 at Walton Arena in the squads’ only meeting this year. But the Razorbacks’ length did its damage on the defensive end of the floor, and bothered Saiz with it. Kingsley’s three-point play pulled Arkansas within 8-6.

Ole Miss Coach Andy Kennedy At The Half ” I think all the talking heads were talking about on the podium that this game’s gonna come down to Moses Kingsley and Sebastian Saiz.

Moses Kingsley’s blocked shots may have saved the game for Arkansas, though.

The game was knotted at 40 after a fast-paced first half that included a combined 17 turnovers. The Rebels held leads as well as closed deficits in a seesaw affair in the final 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, Arkansas is 4-0 ATS in their last four Saturday games, and 5-1 ATS in their last six games following an ATS loss. Arkansas led by six at one point, too. He led the team in both points (23) and minutes (35).

The team’s recent play, including an upset over SC, gave viewers a brief glimmer of hope for an extended postseason, as Ole Miss finally beat Missouri in a way that reflected the actual gap between the two teams. Kessinger walked before back-to-back base hits by Olenek and Blackman scored the freshman to make it a 2-0 game. I don’t know. We’ve won eight of our last 11 and over those 11, we’ve been averaging in the mid-80s.

“We had the right guys shooting free throws”, Anderson said. There was the time they had Baylor on the ropes.

Terence Davis had a game-high 25 points for Ole Miss but needed 21 shots from the field.

“We came down and took a couple of quick ones. We’re fortunate. But defensively, I thought we kicked it in gear going down the stretch”. Deandre Burnett, in particular, was lights out.

The miss allowed the Bulldogs to escape with a win of 59-57.

Even as an Ole Miss fan, last night’s game was never in doubt.

Arkansas displayed its clutch gene again, holding off Ole Miss to improve to 6-1 in games decided by 5 or fewer points this season.

Ole Miss will look to clinch the series tomorrow at 1:30 p.m.as Brady Feigl takes the hill to square off against the Paladins. “We lead the nation in free throws made and tonight we go 8-14 and they go 20-23”. Good to have (Deandre Burnett) back. The Rebels and the Tigers have met just once in the SEC Tournament with Ole Miss winning a thriller, 64-62, en route to the 2013 SEC Tournament title.

“Just take advantage of the opportunity in front of us”, Davis said. But they found a way to get the win, namely by coming up with stops when they had to and making free throws.