Missouri men’s basketball (14-7, 7-7 SEC) continued its slide down the SEC and national rankings with a poor offensive showing as Ole Miss (13-9, 8-7 SEC) swept the season series in a 60-53 win.

“We just try to move on to the next thing and not dwell on the past,” senior forward Jeremiah Tilmon said. “But of course it’s gonna affect us when we know we wanted to win those games and we expected to win those games.”

The Tigers’ top scorer was sophomore forward Kobe Brown with 12 points, as Missouri’s offense shot 35.1% to match its lowest total of the year. It’s tied with the conference opener against Tennessee.

The first four minutes of the game told a much different story. Missouri opened the night 4-6 from the field and put up 10 points by the 15:56 mark in the first half.

To counteract the hot open, the Rebels brought out their trademark zone defense that worked wonders against the Tigers less than two weeks ago in Oxford. The 1-3-1 zone employed by Rebels coach Kermit Davis led to several turnovers as they flustered guards with double teams.

Trapped players resorted to long, often blind cross-court passes which rarely succeeded.

“We were just holding the ball for too long and missing open people by holding the ball too long,” Tilmon said “Once you pass it, somebody already noticed the open man and we passed up a couple open shots.”

Missouri cranked up the pace by getting out into transition — forcing Ole Miss to abandon its zone — and pulled within one possession of the Rebels on a triple from redshirt senior guard Dru Smith with just over eight minutes remaining in the first half.

Then the Tigers connected on one field goal for the remainder of the frame.

Martin’s squad took a couple of bad shots in the cold stretch, but most of the shots were open, especially on all five 3-pointers. Every one of them ricocheted off the iron. All the while, Ole Miss took control on a 10-2 run to end the half and the start of the second half looked like more of the same without any field goals until the 16:54 mark.

After Dru Smith connected with redshirt senior forward Mitchell Smith on a lob for the half’s opening points, Missouri gained some steam in the middle part of the second half and halted another blowout against the Rebels.

The Tigers put together a 13-2 run, spearheaded by stout defense across the board. Meanwhile, the Ole Miss offense went cold with a nearly five-minute scoring drought. Missouri forced nine turnovers, pounced on loose balls and controlled the paint with four blocked shots.

“We have veteran team, so in situations like that when we know we’re down and we’re at home, we just want to continue to fight and give it our all,” Tilmon said. “We started getting stops and we started getting blocks. That was just the fight in us.”

Brown corralled an offensive rebound off a Tilmon miss and got it to go, pulling Missouri even with Ole Miss at 39 after trailing the entire game up to that point. A few possessions later, Tilmon pushed Missouri ahead for the only point in the matchup with a nifty left-hand jump hook in the paint.

Ole Miss began to heat up once again, connecting on 4-6 from the field after missing eight straight to give Missouri its opening. Missouri kept it close and Tilmon finished a layup through contact to tie the game at 50 with just over three minutes on the clock.

The Rebels switched back to the zone, this time a 2-3 zone fused with man-to-man, and wreaked havoc once again.

“They had our guys at a pause,” Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin said. “I thought we just stood around the perimeter instead of attacking the rim.”

Ole Miss established a lead it maintained through the final buzzer with a gutsy mid-range jumper from senior guard Devontae Shuler. On the next possession, sophomore guard Luis Rodriguez drove to the hole met by the defense but made wraparound feed to junior forward KJ Buffen to make it a two-possession game with 1:18 remaining.

A stagnant possession with no shot openings caused a Dru Smith turnover. Mark Smith fouled junior guard Jarkel Joiner and Ole Miss put the game at the free-throw line.

On Missouri’s first possession, Dru Smith threw a pass a few rows back in the bleachers. The errant pass is an apt metaphor for Missouri’s dismal February stretch. In just three weeks, the Tigers fell from the highest-ranked SEC school in the AP Top 25 to most likely looking at the rankings from the outside in next Monday.

_Edited by Jack Soble | jsoble@themaneater.com_