Ole Miss only missed 22 shots all game in its blowout win over Missouri on Wednesday night.

The Rebels corralled nine of them.

In total, Ole Miss out-rebounded Missouri 34 to 19. The effort at all levels of defense but especially on the glass wasn’t there whatsoever. At the very least, it was a far cry from the active-handed, attacking, high-energy defense that the Tigers showcased on Saturday against Alabama.

“Some guys just didn’t give it tonight,” Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin said. “Some guys didn’t show up.”

As one reporter mentioned after the game, Martin has said many times over the years that defense is dependent on effort. In tonight’s game, a combination of great ball movement by the Rebels and yes, Missouri’s effort, got Ole Miss open looks from all over the floor, both inside and outside the arc.

The anticipated matchup of dominant low-post big men in Romello White and Jeremiah Tilmon became an afterthought. Most viewers turned their attention to starting guards Jarkel Joiner, Devontae Shuler and Luis Rodriguez finding and draining open look after open look after open look instead.

“No, not at all,” Martin said when asked if he got a solid effort out of his team tonight. “They just didn’t have that edge, man. That edge.”

A couple instances stood out in particular. Midway through the second half, Shuler missed a three-pointer and the ball careened toward the right block. Missouri guard Mark Smith, stationed at the right block, just watched the ball fly through the air.

As Mark Smith watched the ball, his man, Ole Miss forward Sammy Hunter, ran right by him with no resistance. Hunter grabbed the ball and slammed it home to stretch the Rebels’ lead to 21.

“We just didn’t do a very good job of hitting bodies on our block-outs when the shots were going up,” Missouri guard Dru Smith said.

On another one of Shuler’s 3-point attempts, he found himself with Mitchell Smith guarding him. Shuler, standing at six-foot-three, looked the six-foot-ten Mitchell Smith in the eye and drained the three.

As the SEC Network announcers pointed out, Mitchell Smith guarded Shuler with both hands at his sides and didn’t get either of them up as he fired the shot. That lack of effort and attention to detail hurt the Tigers Wednesday night.

“Even more than rebounding, it’s trying to contest shots, make them make tough plays, so that way we can get the rebound and get out and run in transition,” Dru Smith said.

It hurt them in the form of Ole Miss hitting shots at a clip of almost 57%. The Rebels should have replaced the “Ole” in their name with “can’t” midway through the first half.

This was particularly surprising, coming from a team that entered Wednesday’s game ninth in the SEC in field goal percentage and dead last — by a long shot — from three-point range.

“I think when you allow a team to get their heads up, to get confidence, and I told our guys, I said, ‘Man, they’re a division-one basketball team,’” Martin said. “I said, ‘Guys, remember, we weren’t shooting the ball well from three at one point.’ So it’s the same thing, those guys know how to play basketball. I said ‘Let’s not let this be the night.’ And tonight was the night.”

Martin and Dru Smith both acknowledged that Missouri didn’t play hard enough, which was obvious. The more difficult question is why.

One reason could be that the Tigers let an early second-half run by Ole Miss demoralize them, which caused the effort level to go down considerably.

“I think it was more the lack of effort in the second half,” Martin said. “They made some plays, a turnover here, a turnover there, and all of a sudden they’ve got their heads up and go up 14, 15, 16, different ballgame.”

Given that Missouri came off a season-defining win over Alabama, some suggested that it overlooked an Ole Miss team that came in at 10-8. One could argue that has happened before this season, the Tigers putting together a let-down performance after a big win.

Martin didn’t buy that.

“Yeah, [Alabama] hadn’t lost a game [in conference], but it was a conference opponent,” Martin said. “With respect to those guys, we beat a conference opponent. They just happened to be ranked 10, and that was great, but we didn’t play well in the stretch that we allowed a 22-point lead to get cut.”

Perhaps most perplexingly, Missouri has prided itself on its experience all season, with nine of its ten regular rotation players being juniors or above. Teams with that kind of veteran presence up and down the lineup aren’t supposed to have off nights like this.

“It’s disappointing, just because that’s what we do,” Martin said. “Not necessarily what year they are… It’s not so much the years, it’s just the approach.

Further than that, this is a Missouri team that — like in the aforementioned win on Saturday against Alabama — has stymied opposing offenses with ferocious defensive pressure and fought hard to gain an advantage on the boards all season.

Not tonight.

“I know that’s not who we are as a team,” Dru Smith said. “We can’t come into games and let another team play harder than we did. And I feel like that’s what happened tonight.”

_Edited by Kyle Pinnell | kpinnell@themaneater.com _