{"id":22127,"date":"2015-02-15T07:52:32","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T12:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=22127"},"modified":"2015-02-15T14:59:53","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T19:59:53","slug":"toe-to-toe-rebels-come-up-short-in-sec-heavyweight-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/toe-to-toe-rebels-come-up-short-in-sec-heavyweight-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Toe to Toe: Rebels come up short in SEC ‘Heavyweight’ battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many would find it hard to disagree: Ole Miss<\/strong> and Arkansas<\/strong> are the two best teams in this league outside of Kentucky.<\/span><\/p>\n

These two teams squared off Saturday night, with the Rebels<\/strong> coming up short in a 71-70 <\/span>loss to No. 24 Arkansas. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a high-level game,\u201d Andy Kennedy<\/strong> said. \u201c When you get to February basketball, it’s played like this…We made the shot Thursday night (against Florida) in a highly contested game. We missed the shot tonight, and Arkansas made the play. We didn’t lose the game. Arkansas won it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The loss dropped Ole Miss to 17-8 (8-4) and snapped a six game winning streak. <\/span><\/p>\n

Razorbacks head skipper Mike Anderson<\/strong> differed little from Kennedy’s assessment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt had the makings of a NCAA tournament, that kind of two teams really going after each other,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cLike heavyweights, and we had the last possession.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The game was a tough gritty battle one would expect when watching a Grizzlies game, not SEC basketball. Junior Stefan Moody<\/strong> stood out as a pure scrapper, diving for loose balls, fighting men a foot taller than him for rebounds. Moody had six rebounds and finished with a team high 16 points.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ole Miss as a team rebounded exceptionally well, grabbing 45 rebounds to Arkansas\u2019 31. Shooting percentage was the downfall in this game. Ole Miss shot 38 percent from the floor as a team compared to Arkansas’ 48 percent. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe rebounding got lopsided there in the second half,” Anderson said. \u201cBut when we needed to going down the stretch it just seemed we got four or five stops.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Like all games between two great teams, this game down to the last second. Ole Miss had fought tooth and nail to take a one point lead as Arkansas had the ball with 27 seconds left. <\/span><\/p>\n

Arkansas’ Manuale Watkins, who entered the game solely because starter Anton Beard had fouled out a minute earlier, hit a floater with six seconds remaining to put Arkansas up one. Ole Miss quickly in-bounded the ball hoping to recreate the magic from Thursday night, when Moody hit a three with 2.6 seconds left to win the game. Senior Jarvis Summers<\/strong> drove the lane and put up a floater, but the magic had run out as the buzzer sounded and the ball fell to the floor. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know we made the shot Thursday<\/span><\/span> night, we missed the shot tonight and Arkansas made the play,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cI told our team, I don’t think we lost the game, I think Arkansas won it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Rebels came into the Saturday<\/span><\/span> ranked 36 in the RPI. A win would all but of guaranteed a tournament bid. All is not lost, this was a game that if you win, you gain the world and if you lose, you don\u2019t lose much. This team blew out Arkansas in January. They also beat Florida in the O-Dome. Stopped a red hot Texas A&M team. They took Kentucky to overtime. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Rebels will\u00a0attempt\u00a0rebound\u00a0against arch-rival Mississippi State on Thursday in Starkville<\/span><\/span>. The game is set for 8 PM on ESPN2. <\/span><\/p>\n

Box Score and Stats can be found here: Ole Miss vs. Arkansas<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many would find it hard to disagree: Ole Miss and Arkansas are the two best teams in this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":248,"featured_media":22128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4614,5081,4336,5087,5403,2311,4612,4620],"class_list":["post-22127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ole-miss","tag-andy-kennedy","tag-arkansas-ole-miss","tag-jarvis-summers","tag-mike-anderson","tag-ncaa-top-25","tag-sec","tag-sec-basketball","tag-stefan-moody"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Moody.jpg?fit=600%2C491&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}