Xs and Oats: Prepare for some mud-wrestling on the back end when the Tide host the No. 21 Ole Miss

Grasping. Hooking. Holder. Tracksuits. Chipping. Hard mistakes. Hard screens. A stray elbow here or there (wink wink). Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Chris Beard’s Ole Miss team is playing some borderline dirty ball. And I have a hard time previewing this team because 1. I’m not a reporter and I don’t have to pretend to call balls and strikes; and 2. In a perfect world, the coach of the Tide’s opponent tonight would be…somewhere else, besides the SEC. When you see the aggressive, stormy Rebels on the floor, you could be forgiven for having trouble separating the style of basketball from the taxpayer-funded ethical calamity that has made Mississippi a millionaire.

Despite whatever reservations you may have about Beard, it’s fair to say one of the early SEC surprises has been the 14-2 Rebels (AP No. 21). Ole Miss was expected to be better this year, for sure. That’s especially true after pushing 7’1” F/C John Bol (ESPN 100) and importing a half-dozen players to its no. 16 Portal class (including four blue-chippers). And Ole Miss has traditionally been a borderline tournament team as it is. But the turnaround has been drastic. Defensively, there aren’t really any surprises. Beard has lived off defensive-minded teams. But the real turnarounds have come in both the overall record and especially in how effective the offense is…even if the results seem in the middle of the scoreboard. Given how the Rebels play defense, they won’t need to turn it on to secure solid wins.

There are only three teams that remain undefeated in SEC play — and the Rebels’ efficiency on both ends of the court is why they join Alabama and Auburn atop the standings. Despite the surprising no. 21 ranking, there’s good reason this roster has some overlooked stealth talent in the backcourt, and that Ole Miss might even be underranked. And it’s not like anyone accused Chris Beard of not being able to coach.

Tough game tonight boys.

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Tale of the Tape: No. 21 Ole Miss (14-2, 3-0) against no. 4 Alabama (14-2, 3-0)

Spread: Alabama -9.5 (open) -11.5 stream (O/U 164.0)

Opponent KenPom: 23 (31 attack, 21 defense, 200 pace)
Opponent Evan Miya: 21 (23 attack, 23 defense, 201 pace)
Opponent Bart Torvik: 18 (42 attack, 11 defense, 269 pace)
Opponent NET: 23 (Q1)
Opponent’s RPI: 17
Opponent’s Best KenPom Win: Louisville (33)
Opponent’s Worst KenPom Loss: Memphis (32)

UA Ken Pom: 8. (2 off, 38. defense, 2. pace)
UA Evan Miya: 5th (3 off, 25th defense, 1st pace)
UA Bart Torvik: 4. (2 off, 30. defense, 2. pace)
UA NET Ranking: 7 (4-2 Q1)
UA RPI: 2
UA Best KenPom Win: no. 3 (N) Houston
UA Worst KenPom Loss: no. 21 (N) Oregon

If you’ve never seen how Beard’s teams play and you’re a fan of old-school, attitude-based on-ball defense, then you’re in for a treat. Both offensively and defensively, the Rebels are a throwback team. They are a return to fundamental defense that emphasizes footwork and low posture as a means of denying penetration and easy passes.

Because defenders squat on the ball, it makes opposing guards wary of even routine dribbles: Ole Miss will pick your pocket. The lower bearing also means defenders don’t leave their feet for every fake ball, so easy entries to the post are rare. And even if the ball carrier beats his man off a screen, he’s in for a treat — because he’ll find there’s already at least one other defender in position waiting for him.

Beard emphasizes a “no middle” strategy, and that means contesting every pass or cut to the inside. To accomplish this, the Rebels (like A&M) cheat to the basket, and you don’t often see them get beyond the arc to pick up a shot. But when they do, it’s to catch the guard in a bad decision or cut off penetration to the basket. But unlike other on-ball pressure teams we’ve seen, Beards’ teams are so hyper-aggressive on shutdown that it’s fairer to call his defensive style more of a hybrid man-zone really. Call it a 2-1-2 Matchup zone, med is not entirely unfair.

Here’s how it looks in motion:

You can see a whole lot going on here: Defenders facing their assignment, the aggressive switches, the communication on the switch, trying to catch the wing towards the baseline, the unexpected double player on the wing, cutting off an easy drive for a layup, where the defender jumps beyond the arc when he suspects there might be a perimeter shot. All that pressure makes every decision matter more, increasing the chances of a turnover and a quick transition on offense for the Red Raiders. Of course, that’s the whole point… but we’ll get to that in a moment.

It is a difficult team to find easy looks against. That said, like all on-ball matchup concepts, it has some vulnerabilities.

• Obviously, the Rebels make a lot of mistakes, and they especially surrender a lot of shooting mistakes.
• It takes just as much communication on their part to execute — smart ball movement and multiple off-ball screens can both free up shooters and confuse defenders about their assignment.
• It also means the rebels are vulnerable to a comeback. By denying the middle with everyone, you necessarily limit the effort on the defensive glass. That’s actually how Memphis ran them out of the building: Getting to the basket may not be easy, but an aggressive post presence can make second-chance scoring and easy putbacks your most valuable interior scoring option. The tall, physical Tigers lived on just that.
• But most importantly (just like we saw vs. Texas A&M), it leaves shooters open beyond the perimeter – threes are the weakness of any defense that takes away lane penetration, and the Rebs are no exception. They are one of the worst teams in the country in perimeter defense.

Let’s return to the forced turnover in the GIF above.

Do you see that transition? You don’t think the Beard teams are fast (and they aren’t). But like South Dakota State, South Carolina and a few other teams we’ve seen this season, they strategically use tempo to turn mistakes into mismatches with ease. point.

Offensively, Beard runs a true old-school motion offense (there’s that word again). But he’s also remarkably eclectic about how he does it. Each year, he has tweaked the offense and catered to players’ strengths instead of having a set system and then recruiting and coaching for it. He’s the anti-Buzz in another way — Beard is notoriously uninterested in calling plays every time down the floor. Even if he will call them, they will almost always lean into off-ball screens. If there’s one hallmark of his brand of scoring, it’s that.

He’s a Bobby Knight clone: Pass, cut, screen vs. man; dribble vs. the zone.

Beard’s offense is expected to score in a variety of ways: pick-and-roll, off-ball screens to free up secondary shooters, penetration, open lane and iso. This means he gives his ball handlers a lot of freedom to read the defense and then be the trigger for the offense. And because that’s the Rebels’ litmus test when they hit the low-mid 70s, they’ll be looking for easy spots to find them — especially by emphasizing transition scoring. Beard is similar to Coach Oats in that regard: Offense is inseparable from defense, and when you play defense, offense comes. It isn’t usually an offense that relies on its guards to do the heavy lifting — the 3 to 5 feeds the beast with a lot of double ball screens and cuts to the basket.

We say “usually” because remember when we wrote above that Beard is eclectic and tailors the offense to the staff? This year is a huge departure from the norm – the guards do the heavy lifting. In fact, it’s the definition of small ball: all four of Ole Miss’ leading scorers are in the backcourt, and not a single one of them is 6’6” or taller. This will be one of the smallest lineups Alabama faces all season: even smaller than South Carolina. I’ll have to check, but this might be the smallest cast of shortstops ‘Bama will see all year (329th, average height: 6’4″)

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Key personnel

The obvious key for the Rebels is the four primary rotation guards – all are seniors, all have scored 1000+ points in their careers, and Nate Oats went after two of them hard, if that tells you what kind of player populates the Beard’s backcourt.

Sean Pedulla mans the point as a slightly undersized combo guard (6′) and leads the team in scoring. At SG is the more physical prototypical 6’4” Jaylen Murray — who is also the team’s best perimeter shooter (41.5%). He is also an excellent ball handler and leads the Rebels in assists. It’s probably more fair to call them both combo guards as they are both excellent perimeter scorers (40%+), excellent distributors and can create their own shots as well as feed other players. They are also easily the two best free throw specialists on a team that is slightly below average from the stripe.

5’11” Matthew Murrell is one of the smartest little defenders you’ll ever see. He and Pedulla are the two best on the team at forcing turnovers – and that should really come as no surprise. Since the defensive positioning of this scheme relies on keeping low, they are much closer to the dribble as smaller guys.

The most physically imposing of the bunch is 6’6” SF/G Dre Davis, who is second on the team in rebounds. He’s almost always near the basket, and the Rebels run a lot of curl cuts to get him loose and let him do some dirty work near the glass. Off the bench is sixth man Davon Barnes (another senior), who is a skilled rebounder, smart ballhandler and decent scorer relative to his minutes played (think Quinerly…but without the turnovers). It’s a quality backcourt in toto.

What suits the Rebels’ big men won’t overwhelm you, but they is effective. Brakefield and Dia each log about 20 minutes a night, combine for about 18 a night, and reel in a dozen or so rebounds per outing. Their backup, Mikeal Brown-Jones, is MIA tonight with a concussion.

That’s how you see

Tuesday, January 14, 6:00 Central, ESPNU

Forecast

At first blush, this seems like a disrespectful spread. But when you really break it down, it’s not. Alabama is almost custom built to run roughshod over the Rebels. Ole Miss wants to play defense-first basketball, have teams win one-on-one matchups consistently and force fouls. Above all, Ole Miss wants to keep teams off the free throw line and make you beat them with perimeter shots.

However, that is exactly what Alabama is built to do. They are increasingly knocking down three-pointers; they are among the nation’s best at getting to the stripe; they rebound very well. And above all, they are a tall team. Considering how Ole Miss plays, combined with their lack of height, the size difference at Alabama will be a real problem for the Rebels to deal with. All the defensive positioning in the world is irrelevant if your defensive assignment has you with half a foot — and that will be the case more often than not for Ole Miss tonight. Alabama just needs to capitalize on their advantages, hit their open shots, force Ole Miss to hack them and, above all, be smart with the basketball. Ole Miss is a good team, but some nights they are going to run into bad mismatches. This is one such mismatch: Jarin, Grant, Sherrell and Cliff could be in for big nights.

At the end of the night, there will be (at best) two undefeated teams left in the SEC. Given Johni Broome’s ankle, it could very well be one — Alabama needs to make sure it’s among them.

Predictive Modeling: Alabama -12.13 to -13.38

Alabama 86
Miss Ole 73

Hoping for the best.
Roll Tide.

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