Reminder....

The game today against New Mexico is being televised on Versus at 3 p.m. Big game for the Rebels. New Mexico is 5-4 on the season, but they're always tough at the Pit. Their loss to UCF earlier in the season broke a 33 game home court winning streak. It will be tough to win on the road in a hostile environment, but we really need to pull out a win today. We really can't afford many more pre-conference losses if we hope to have a shot at the NCAA tourney. We've still got tough neutral site games with Lousville and Southern Miss left. Hopefully we'll follow up on our solid showing in New Orleans and come away with another road win.

Crickets?

Sorry for the lack of updates to ye' old Strands of Crepe Paper blog. Work, travel, and Christmas obligations have left little time for Juha to spend on the blog. I apologize and will try to do better in the new year. As for the hoops squad...big win in the Big Easy on Saturday. It was our first true road game of the year, and I was very glad that our young team was able to come away with the win. UNO isn't a very good team, but fans of Ole Miss basketball know that no road game is ever a guaranteed win. I wasn't didn't attend the game and couldn't listen, but Chris Warren looks to have played a terrific game. Chris scored 29 to set a career-high scoring mark, including 5 of 8 from deep. Good to see Chris bounce back and play very well after the tough finish he had against West Virginia. David Huertas scored 12, and I believe that all of those points came in the last 10 minutes of the game. Terrico White was the other double digit scorer with 11. I know I'm a broken record, but we've got to find that consisted 3rd scorer who is going to give us 12-15 a night. Terrico looks like the best candidate to fill that spot right now.

I won't comment much on the West Virginia game because I imagine that anybody who reads this blog saw the game. Frustrating to say the least. We all knew that rebounding was going to be a problem this year, but the WVU game was ridiculous. I have never seen a team give up so many offensive rebounds off of free throws. I'm sure that practice on Wednesday and Thursday was not very fun for our bigs. It's going to be long year if we can't find a way to rebound better than we did last Wednesday. Luckily, WVU is probably one of the better rebounding teams that we will face this season. Disappointed in the loss, but encouraged that we played well enough where we could have and should have beaten a quality team. The Rebs are off this week for finals and will return to action Saturday against New Mexico in the Pit. It will be tough game on the road, but one that we could and should probably win. New Mexico is 4-4 on the year with a home loss to Central Florida and a narrow 2 point home win over Southern Miss. We can't drop too many more in the pre-season if we want to have any chance at an NCAA bid.

West Virginia (4-1) at Ole Miss (5-1)

Ole Miss will have their toughest test of the season on Wednesday night when Bob Huggins and the West Virginia Mountaineers come to town. As we all know, AK was interim coach at Cinci after Huggins was unceremoniously ousted from his job there. AK was Huggins' top assistant for several seasons and credits Huggins with being his most influential basketball mentor. WVU has a good team whose one loss came to Kentucky in the finals of the Las Vegas Invitational last Saturday. Their best win of the season came against Iowa in the semifinals of the same tournament. West Virginia was a sweet 16 team a year ago. The Mountaineers are led by senior guard Alex Ruoff who averages 15.8 ppg and is the team's best long-range shooter. Junior forward Da'Sean Butler (12.4) and freshman guard Daryl Bryant (10.6) are WVU's other double digit scorers. The Ole Miss big men will have to step up their rebounding if we are going to have a chance to win. WVU is a very good rebounding team who will kill us with second-chance points if we let them. Ole Miss will once again be looking for a consistent 3rd scorer to take some of the burden off of Warren/Huertas. Terrico White and Zach Graham have been that player in spots, but neither have given us consistent scoring on a game by game basis. We'll also be looking for 2 guys to step up and solidify our frontcourt play which can be described as disappointing at best so far. I'm still looking for the Malcolm White to step forward that we had heard such good things about in the preseason. Cranston, Henry, and Holloway have shown flashes, but none of the three have played well for an entire game. That needs to change soon or the losses are going to start piling up as our schedule toughens. Hopefully we will have a good crowd for this marquee out of conference game. Tip is at 8 and will be televised by FSN.