Vanderbilt (17-5) dropped its third straight game with a 67-61 loss to Ole Miss (16-5). Out-rebounded 39-29, the Commodores struggled to compete with the size of their SEC opponent in yet another outing.
“There are going to be teams that are bigger than us, and a lot of them are going to be in the SEC,” head coach Shea Ralph said. “There isn’t a basketball team on the planet that has everything.”
The Rebels won the opening tip and used up the majority of the shot clock before converting from mid-range. In the first of a litany of turnovers, Sacha Washington received the ball without enough time to get a shot off, ending Vanderbilt’s first possession without an attempt.
The Commodores wouldn’t get going on offense until a couple of minutes into the first quarter when Jordyn Oliver stole the ball and came back up the court for a layup. Despite missing an and-one opportunity, the defense-to-offense possession provided an early spark plug for the Commodores, emphasized by a Justine Pissott three that put the Black and Gold up 7-2.
Both teams struggled to get anything going offensively in the middle minutes of the opening quarter. In an adjustment from the usual defensive scheme, the Commodores went most of the opening half without running a press, but the Rebels were their own worst enemy with three traveling violations and six total turnovers in the first 10 minutes.
The Commodores didn’t fare much better at ball handling in the first quarter with six of their own turnovers largely spurred by an aggressive Ole Miss defensive scheme. The Rebels ran a modified trap formation that used their length to shut down Vanderbilt’s passing lanes, disrupting the flow of the offense and forcing several last-second isolation shot attempts.
After four minutes without a bucket, Pissott opened the well back up with a tough contested three from the left side. The Commodores would end the first quarter with a narrow 12-9 lead that expanded mere seconds into the second quarter with a quick Khamil Pierre layup.
The two-time SEC Freshman of the Week was the deciding factor for Vanderbilt to start the second period, scoring the first six points for the Commodores in a flurry of layups. Jordyn Cambridge got the next word in, putting up two crucial three-pointers to restart a tepid Commodore offense.
After the Rebels took a 28-24 lead with 1:25 remaining before the half, Vanderbilt found a quick barrage of points with Iyana Moore’s first three of the game and yet another layup from Pierre — who led all Vanderbilt scorers with 10 at the half. Despite the late burst, a lack of defensive effort in the closing seconds allowed Ole Miss to score an open layup as the shot clock expired, setting the score at 30-29 in favor of the Rebels to enter the second half.
“The thing that we were missing today was toughness,” Ralph said. “With rebounding and defense it’s not [just] a skill. It’s also heart and effort.”
Vanderbilt took the lead on their first possession back from the break as Washington slithered around a defender for an open layup. A few traded shots and two quick buckets from Oliver tied the game at 35-35 with 6:28 remaining in the quarter.
For the next five minutes, both teams traded blows with a slight edge in favor of an Ole Miss offensive that couldn’t seem to miss from mid-range. After an untimely bad pass from Washington at the 1:41 mark, the Rebels stormed down the court for another jumper off the fast break, bringing their lead to 47-41. Though a Moore three-pointer following a timeout would cut the lead in half, Ole Miss kept their foot on the gas for the remainder of the period, ending the quarter up 51-44 — their largest lead of the game.
The Rebels expanded their lead through the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, bringing it to nine points before a deep three from Moore cut it back to two possessions. Vanderbilt got plenty of chances to reduce it further after shutting down four straight Ole Miss possessions, but the deficit continued to oscillate between two and three possessions for almost the entirety of the quarter.
With 1:18 left in the game and the score 61-55 in favor of the Rebels, a steal from Moore seemed the last hope for the Vanderbilt to get back in the game; but, in a sequence emblematic of much of the fourth quarter, the junior mishandled the ball and juggled it out of bounds, sounding the final bell on a Commodore comeback. By a margin of 67-61, Vanderbilt would drop its third straight game.
“The struggles that we’re having now don’t eliminate or negate the things we’ve done this season,” Ralph said. “There’s a lot of things you can look at that we could have done better that wouldn’t require a change of strategy but us being a better version of ourselves.”
Vanderbilt will face their next two opponents at home as they take on Alabama on Feb. 5 and LSU on Feb. 8.
