Arkansas tops Ole Miss basketball, Rebs fall to 0-2

At times, this conference game looked competitive though Ole Miss struggled to avoid turnovers and lost at home to Arkansas on Wednesday, 94-87.

The Rebels (8-7, 0-2 SEC) mounted a furious comeback in the final six minutes, but Arkansas (12-3, 2-0 SEC) made clutch free throws in the last minute to put the game on ice. Ole Miss cut the Razorback lead to only four points with less than two minutes to play after being down by as many as 16 points in the second half.

What was odd about the comeback effort was that it came with an unlikely line-up in the game. All SEC big Malik Dia was on the bench with four fouls while sophomore Eduardo Klafke went on a scoring streak of nine straight points for the Rebels. Dia and Ilias Kamardine finished tied for the highest scoring Rebels player with 16 points.

Arkansas guard Darius Acuff Jr. and wing Trevon Brazile will haunt Chris Beard with the performance the combo put on tonight with a combined 44 points. Acuff led all Hogs with 26 points and seemed unstoppable and unflappable no matter who guarded the point guard.

Perimeter shooting and defense continue to be major woes for this basketball team. The Rebels shot only 31 percent from behind the arc (8/26) while the Razorbacks managed 42 percent (10/24).

While the turnover margin was a +1 for Ole Miss, it felt like half of them were momentum killers for the Rebels. Fast breaks stopped by a step out of bounds or careless ball handling combined with some foul trouble made for enough of an advantage for Arkansas to walk away with a win on the road.

Beard’s squad has fallen far from last season’s Sweet Sixteen, but it does have another home game coming in a few days against Missouri to try to bounce back. After that home game, it is a road trip to top 25 Georgia and a trip to Starkville against red hot in-state rival Mississippi State. Yikes. Here’s hoping one of the line-ups will catch fire and give this team some kind of spark for the second half of this season.