An efficient offensive outing for No. 23 Ole Miss carried the Rebels to a dominant 86-63 win over a short-handed Louisville club in the SEC/ACC Challenge.
Former Cardinal Dre Davis scored a season-high 20 points in a homecoming of sorts on Tuesday night. He joined four of his teammates in mounting double-digits on the scoreboard.
Ole Miss (7-1) connected on 57% of its shots in the road matchup and capitalized on a cold night from three-point range for Louisville (5-3). Pat Kelsey’s Cardinals found themselves in limbo early in the contest after missing their first 11 attempts from deep.
A Sean Pedulla triple gave the Rebels a 3-2 lead with 18:29 left in the first half and Ole Miss never trailed after. Leaning on stalwart defense and simultaneously benefitting from a rough Cardinal shooting performance, Ole Miss was able to amass a 12-point advantage before Louisville inevitably began storming back.
Efforts by a Chucky Hepburn-led Cardinals group to cut the Rebels’ lead ahead of the midway break were mostly successful, but not entirely enough to overcome a strong 20 minutes of action by Davis and Pedulla. Ole Miss led 40-31 at halftime.
Louisville opened the second half on a 6-2 run, cutting the deficit to just five points. Ole Miss responded with an avalanche of scoring, posting as large as a 26-point lead in the process, with Davon Barnes and Matthew Murrell beginning to wake up offensively.
The Cardinals benefitted from the Rebels being in early foul trouble. Louisville found itself in the double bonus with more than 10 minutes on the clock. Ole Miss, however, was able to mitigate damage with fouls being dispersed mostly evenly among guys getting big minutes in the rotation.
Just about any successful shot by the Cardinals was neutralized by the Rebels down the stretch, earning the red and blue a coveted Quad 1 win.
Ahead of the midweek matchup, Louisville received devastating news that coveted forward Kasean Pryor would be missing the rest of the season with an ACL injury. Pryor was the team’s third-leading scorer, averaging 12 points per game.
Kelsey and company also lacked rotational players Koren Johnson and Aboubacar Traore on Tuesday. Both were averaged around 19 minutes in the two games they played this year.
Ole Miss took advantage of Louisville’s lack of depth and especially punished the Cardinals down low. The Rebels had 48 points in the paint compared to 26 from their counterpart.
Louisville won the rebounding battle, hauling in seven more boards than Ole Miss. The disparity was especially seen on the offensive glass where the Cardinals out-rebounded the Rebels by 11.
As has been customary for Ole Miss this season, the Rebels were the better team in protecting the ball. Ole Miss coughed it up eight times, but forced 12 Louisville turnovers and scored 15 points off of Cardinal miscues.
The Rebels’ bench, which accounted for 25 of Ole Miss’ points, also factored into the team’s commanding victory. Barnes and freshman Eduardo Klafke shined off the bench, scoring a combined 17 points when their names were called.
Pedulla was Ole Miss’ second-leading scorer with 16 points and top facilitator with seven assists. Malik Dia led the Rebels in rebounding with six boards. Hepburn carried Louisville’s offense, scoring 19 points.
Next up for Ole Miss is a Saturday night home matchup against Lindenwood. Tipoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. CT and the game will be broadcast on SEC Network+ as well as participating SuperTalk Mississippi stations.