Ole Miss hoops struggles without Shuler
Life without Devontae Shuler didn't start the way Ole Miss basketball hoped.
Ole Miss lost 70-61 in the first round of the NIT Friday against Louisiana Tech. The loss came in a game where the Rebels were missing two starters including Shuler, who didn't player after a family emergency earlier in the week.
Without the ALL-SEC point guard, Ole Miss didn't have much of an offense. Sure, the Rebels shot 41% from the floor. But they also turned the ball over 21 times and were equaled in points in the paint by a team that only had one regular player taller than 6-foot-7.
"I'm proud of our guys," Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis said. "I thought they fought hard. They were excited about coming and playing. They were a little disjointed the first 10 minutes of the game. We just turned the ball over way too much."
Ole Miss essentially played with seven players. Nine saw the court. But one
of those was Antavion Collum, who only saw action once in the last 23 games. And another was walk-on John Mcbride, who played two minutes.
On the plus side, Ole Miss did a relatively good job of staying out of foul trouble. Romello White and Robert Allen were limited in the first half but played clean enough in the second half to stick it out to the end.
The minus is these Rebels clearly played fatigued, resulting in 11 secondhalf turnovers. Louisiana Tech shot 29 free throws, 23 in the second half. Jarkel Joiner shot 4-for-8 in the first half and 3-for-9 in the second half.
Clearly this game wasn't an audition for next year. Ole Miss wanted to win the NIT this year, and as a No. 1 seed, it should've been in position to do so.
But without Shuler and with White limited in minutes early, it looked like Ole Miss was poised to start rolling out its 2021-22 game plan.
Luis Rodriguez scored 10 points with seven rebounds in the first half. Joiner scored 11 points and dished five assists. The plan for the future looked good.
Then it stopped looking good. Rodriguez didn't score in the second half. Robert Allen didn't score in the second half. Matthew Murrell was 1-for-6 in the second half. All eight of the players who saw the court in the final 20 minutes turned the ball over at least once.
"I thought they competed hard," Davis said. "They've been a good group to coach. I'm proud of them for what they did."
None of this should be read as a referendum on whether next year's team will be good or bad. Kermit Davis will have far more than four days to put together a game plan to start next season. These players will be better prepared to play together, or more crucially, without Shuler. Still, it's going to be a long offseason for these Rebels. In less than a week they went from being a team that believed it belonged in the NCAA Tournament to being a team that got bounced as a No. 1 seed in the first round of the NIT.
A lot of the players will be the same. The hope is that the results won't be.
Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.