Bear’s teammates were very happy for him. #Family @OleMissMBB @Thabear4 pic.twitter.com/7fFmjEsNcg
— OleMissPix (@OleMissPix) December 1, 2013
Ole Miss may be underrated.If Derrick Millinghaus, Jarvis Summers and Marshall Henderson keep putting up scoring performances like they did against Penn State in a 79-76 win at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, this team could easily get back to the NCAA Tournament for a 2nd consecutive year.
Henderson and Summers each scored 19 points for the Rebels. Millinghaus contributed 14. The trio was a combined 9 of 19 from behind the arc, and they also showed the ability to create inside.
Demarco Cox, named Barclays Center Classic Tournament MVP, is producing in the paint, and Aaron Jones is getting his share of blocks. They combined for 13 points today, and are looking more and more able to get the job done inside. But it's the trio of Henderson, Millinghaus and Summers that could take this team places.
"He’s our most experienced player," Kennedy said of Summers. "He’s played more minutes than anyone else on our team. I trust him. I count on him to do a number of things. In the second half, when they hit us in the mouth and had us on our heels, he was the guy that made plays for us. And Marshall does what Marshall does…he flails around and takes crazy shots and then all of a sudden you look up and he’ll knock down two or three in a row and it’ll just change the whole flow of the game. We try to ride him when he’s hot.”
It's early in the season, but two wins on a neutral floor against ACC and Big Ten schools like Georgia Tech and Penn State make me think this could be another fun year for Ole Miss basketball.
The Rebels improved to 6-0, and are battle tested going into two more games against big non-conference competition - at Kansas State on Thursday (8 p.m., ESPNU) and at home versus Oregon (4 p.m., ESPNU) December 8.