Ole Miss basketball embarrassed by Texas A&M to close out regular season
OXFORD — Few of Ole Miss basketball's little lapses have gone unpunished lately. So frequent were the mistakes Saturday, it would have taken a shockingly poor Texas A&M effort to leave those lapses unexploited.
The Rebels played uninterested defense, took bad shots, gave the ball away repeatedly and failed to limit the Aggies' advantage on the glass. The result was as rancid as the ingredients.
Texas A&M scored the first 14 points of the game on its way to handing the Rebels an 86-60 defeat in their final game of the regular season. The loss is Ole Miss' eighth in the past 10 games.
Nearly every Ole Miss (20-11, 7-11 SEC) possession in the first four minutes seemed to end with a bad shot or a mistake. The Rebels gave the ball away four times before the first media timeout.
Presented with chance after chance to charge at an undermanned and unsettled Ole Miss defense, the Aggies (18-13, 9-9) took advantage. Eleven of those first 14 points came either at the free-throw line or at the rim.
After the Texas A&M lead ballooned to 18 points, the Rebels finally set about chipping away. They trimmed the visitors' advantage to six points with 6:15 to play in the first half.
That was as close as they'd get.
The Aggies responded to go into the locker room with a 13-point lead. Ten minutes into the second half, they'd expanded their advantage to 22 and put the game entirely out of reach.
In its totality, the Rebels' defensive performance against one of the least efficient offenses in high-level basketball proved disastrous.
Among power programs, only Rutgers began play this weekend with a worse effective field goal percentage than the Aggies.
Ole Miss didn't just make Texas A&M's offense look effective ‒ the Rebels made it look brilliant. The Aggies cashed in on 13 of their 26 3-point attempts, marking just the sixth time this season they've made 10 or more triples. Their 86 points set a new season high for the Aggies on the road.
As usual, the star guard duo of Tyrece Radford and Wade Taylor sparked the scoring, combining for 38 points. But Manny Obaseki, who'd averaged fewer than five points on the season, exploded for 25.
With their 3-pointers not falling, the Rebels had no answer for it. Matthew Murrell, playing his last regular-season game at the SJB Pavilion, finished 1-of-9 from deep. Allen Flanigan, the Rebels' second-leading scorer, contributed two points.
Aggies attack Ole Miss basketball inside
Texas A&M's players are smaller, on average, than the Rebels. Despite this, the Aggies have achieved a reputation for dominating inside while the Rebels have spent the season trying to figure out why they continuously get pushed around in the paint.
The Aggies won that part of the court again Saturday, outscoring the Rebels 36-22 in the lane.
They exploited Ole Miss' main weakness, grabbing 18 offensive rebounds leading to 20 second-chance points. Texas A&M outrebounded the Rebels 50-21 in total.
LOOKING AHEAD: What Matthew Murrell, Jaemyn Brakefield said about their Ole Miss basketball futures
Up next
Ole Miss will travel to Nashville next week for the SEC Tournament as the No. 10 seed. It will begin the postseason with a rematch against the No. 7 seed Aggies (6 p.m., SEC Network).
David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.
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This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Ole Miss basketball thumped at home by Texas A&M to end regular season
