Ole Miss uses upset win to rejuvenate bumpy season
OXFORD, Miss. -- Andy Kennedy stood in a hallway inside Tad Smith Coliseum, check in the win column, smile on his face. It was late Tuesday night, not long after his Ole Miss Rebels had upset No. 24 Kentucky by an 85-80 margin. And when all the basketball-related talk finally slowed down, there was time for one more question, a simple question that industry folks had been wondering for weeks.
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| Relax, Andy Kennedy. Things may be picking up for your Mississippi Rebels. (AP) |
"I've had a rough month," Kennedy said. "But I'm better now."
I guess so.
That's what a victory like this can do. It can snap a three-game losing streak, spark life into an apathetic fan base, raise the confidence of an injury-riddled roster and, most importantly, make a man who has been dealing with more on-the-court problems and off-the-court distractions than any other in college basketball feel better, if only for a moment or a night or a week or whatever.
However long it is, Kennedy will take it.
Because, man, this sure has been a helluva season.
Consider: Ole Miss is playing without three of its top four guards (Chris Warren, Eniel Polynice and Trevor Gaskins), all out for the season with knee injuries; that's the on-the-court stuff.
But the off-the-court stuff has been just as trying, specifically the headline-generating arrest for allegedly assaulting a Cincinnati cab driver last month. Kennedy immediately denied any wrongdoing and even filed a lawsuit against the cab driver. But from a public relations standpoint, the damage was done the moment the mug shot was snapped. And if that wasn't embarrassing enough, the story made the national rounds again two weeks ago when Kennedy's wife filed a lack of consortium lawsuit against the cabbie (and another witness).
Did I mention Kennedy was having a tough season?
"You know what's crazy is that through all of the personal drama, basketball has been my solace, because this is what I do," Kennedy said. "It's easy when things happen to feel sorry for yourself and say, 'Poor me.' But the basketball has kept me focused because I cannot show any sign of weakness or any sign that I'm giving in to this. So the basketball part has really been great for me, and to see these guys respond the way they did tonight was tremendous."
Tremendous doesn't quite capture it.
Understand, this was an Ole Miss team that had lost three consecutive games -- two to first-year coaches (Trent Johnson at LSU and Darrin Horn at South Carolina) and one to a veteran coach who was subsequently forced to resign (Mark Gottfried at Alabama). On the other end of the spectrum was Kentucky, which entered on a five-game winning streak, with a national ranking, and on the shoulders of 54-points-in-one-game-scorer Jodie Meeks.
Advantage: Wildcats.
And then the game started.
Ole Miss used a man-to-man defense, a box-and-one defense and a 2-3 zone, all in an attempt to stop Meeks, strategy being that if the Rebels could stifle the high-scoring guard (with Zach Graham face-guarding him), sag on Patrick Patterson and make the "other" Wildcats try to beat them from beyond the arc they might just be OK. Turns out, it was a good strategy, one that led to A) Meeks getting limited touches, B) Meeks missing his first nine shots, C) Meeks finishing 4-of-15 from the field in 40 minutes, and D) the Wildcats shooting 7-of-28 from 3-point range.
"Our guys carried out the game plan," Kennedy said. "Our hope was that they'd go 7-of-28 from the 3-point line, and that's what they did."
Meantime, what the Rebels did was create momentum before this weekend's game at Mississippi State.
Create excitement around a southern campus that is mostly focused on football recruiting.
Create further havoc in the SEC, where ranked teams become unranked every week.
Create good news for their coach, who sure did need some.
"We know he's going through a lot of stuff," Graham said. "But I think he's been doing well."
And even better now.
