HOOPS: 2010 First Five

On the subject of next year, as Matt mentions below, I submit a projected first five.

F – Malcolm White
PG – Chris Warren
2G – David Huertas
3G – Terrico White
4G – Eniel Polynice

I don’t see M White, Holloway or Cranston transforming into a back-to-the-basket guy during the off-season.

The strength of this team will be guards. Polynice can guard a power forward.

You have four guys in that lineup who can score, and if it’s that balanced, Malcolm will score more often. Hopefully chemistry will develop smoothly.

Thoughts?

— PA

BASEBALL: Weekend pitching rotations

This from the SEC. They list Ole Miss as TBA on Sunday. Earlier in the week Mike Bianco said he’d use Aaron Barrett, the Friday starter since the beginning of the season, on Sunday.

— PA

OLE MISS (9-3, 0-0 SEC) at VANDERBILT (10-4, 0-0 SEC)
FRIDAY (6:00 p.m. CT)
SATURDAY (3:00 p.m. CT)
SUNDAY (1:00 p.m. CT)

OLE MISS
So. LHP Drew Pomeranz (1-0, 2.57 ERA)
Jr. RHP Phillip Irwin (2-0, 1.72 ERA)
TBA

VANDERBILT
Jr. LHP Mike Minor (1-0, 2.21 ERA)
So. RHP Caleb Cotham (3-0, 1.29 ERA)
Sr. RHP Nick Christiani (2-0, 3.71 ERA)

HOOPS: Kennedy quotes

Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy following the Rebels’ 71-58 loss to Kentucky in the SEC tournament.

“Typically, if you look at our team, if we can come out with the right approach to start the second half, we can be in it till the end. I thought we had a couple of key mistakes early which allowed Kentucky to stretch. We could never get the game back to where we were putting real pressure on their shots.” …

“We had a couple of breakdowns in transition against the press allowing Meeks to go for an and one. We leave him in the zone, and when you leave him in the zone, he’s going to make you pay.” …

“I told our guys in the locker room that I’m really proud of them, honestly, with what they’ve had to go through. They’ve continued to fight. No one likes to lose, and it’s been a hard year from the standpoint of each and every night know you have to play the maximum just to give yourself a chance. But I’m really proud of these guys. I think many of them grew up throughout the course of the season, and that will bode well for the future of our program.” …

“I didn’t see David visibly imping nearly as bad as he has in the prior two games. He told me he could go. We went with him. We tried to get him involved in the offense. He wanted to play. He realized it was win or go home. I thought he gave great effort. Again, shooting is such that without those game reps I think sometimes you can get out of rhythm. Basketball is a game of rhythm and flow. I think he lost a little of that at the end of the season.”

— PA

HOOPS: Kentucky 71, Ole Miss 58

A few quick thoughts here.

Terrico White is amazing. He became the best player on this team when the team needed him most. For a half today it looked like he might be enough to carry the Rebels to another win.

Kentucky guarded him much harder in the second half, trying as hard as they could to limit his touches, and the Wildcats were successful for the most part.

For much of this season the Rebels had another answer when Terrico needed help, but David Huertas has been limited by his foot the last three games, and that’s affected his shooting. It hasn’t affected his pushing off and technique so much, though that’s been part of it, but his rhythm has been off because of the practice time he’s missed.

Andy Kennedy early this season talked about the need to develop a third scorer. That was painfully evident today. When you get past Terrico’s 21 and David’s 15 on the box score you see six points from Murphy Holloway, Malcolm White and Zach Graham. That’s not enough from the supporting cast.

Graham played good defense against Kentucky’s Jodie Meeks again, but Meeks is more than a 3-point shooter. He was 1-for-4 behind the arc but got his points in other ways and was 9-for-15 from the floor. A couple of times he lost Graham on the dribble and was fouled by an Ole Miss post player.

The Rebels went a stretch of 7:17 between field goals in the second half. A big part of that was due to Kentucky center Patrick Patterson. Terrico wasn’t getting off his shots, and when Huertas, Graham and others tried to get it inside, Patterson had three blocked shots in the second half.

Kennedy came into this game believing Ole Miss needed a win to be in the conversation for the NIT, and I agree. The official word on postseason will come down Sunday night, but I think the roller coaster ends here. We’ll see.

If that is in fact the case, it was a great job of coaching and bringing together players who didn’t expect to play the roles they were asked to play in late December.

Finally, with Huertas’ bruised foot and the impact that head on the Rebels’ leading scorer, Ole Miss had the injury it couldn’t overcome and ran out of gas at the end.

— PA

HOOPS: Kentucky game thread

I hate to report that I’m having wireless issues here. There are a number of us who are able to connect to the network, but the network is extremely slow and is barely loading pages.

Don’t know if it will load this one.

Anyway, David Huertas went through warm-ups in a warm-up suit. He appears available to play, but is not starting.

Your Ole Miss starters are White, White, Holloway, Graham and Bogan.

The Kentucky fans have turned out in sort of a proportional way. There are far fewer than there normally would be, but in a smaller arena the affect is the same as it would be in the Georgia Dome. In essence, it’s a Kentucky home game.

Rebels are in Red, Cats in White.

— PA

FYI: Game Day

TAMPA, Fla. — The sun is rising here, and when it does, it’s pretty nice. No rain, no clouds yesterday. The temperature reached 88, and I felt somewhat guilty when I thought about a 40-degree day in Tupelo, then it passed.

It’s game day, and the Rebels tip off with Kentucky at noon central. I’ll have an update from the arena before then, and I’ll have the live blog going during the game. We’ve been given no guidelines about how to blog or not blog, but this is the kind of event where suddenly everyone is interested in how we blog. We’ll wait and see on that.

Brad is stirring, and I think we’re about to by-pass the hotel workout room for the beach.

— PA

HOOPS: From Tampa

Rebels hoping they can pull a defensive encore against Kentucky guard Jodie Meeks, the SEC’s leading scorer.

— PA

BASEBALL: Ole Miss 3, Austin Peay 0

Brett Bukvich leads the shutout and helps the Rebels to a two-game sweep of the Ohio Valley Conference Governors. SEC play begins Friday at 6 at Vanderbilt.

— PA