OXFORD – Ole Miss senior guard Sean Pedulla scored 18 points in the second half Saturday against Queens, and the No. 17 Rebels defeated the Royals 80-62 at SJB Pavilion, the Rebels’ fifth straight win overall.
Pedulla finished with a game-high 25 points. Four Rebels (11-1) finished in double-figure scoring – Pedulla, senior guard Dre Davis (11), senior guard Jaylen Murray (10) and senior guard Matthew Murrell (10). Murrell had missed the previous three games with a lower-body injury and played 22:33 off the bench Saturday.
Ole Miss shot 27 3-pointers in the game and made seven, the Rebels’ third-fewest of the season.
“We did not play (one of) our better game(s) of the year. But I thought our guys’ hearts were in the right place for the most part,” Ole Miss head coach Chris Beard said. “We took a lot of threes tonight. From where I was sitting, they were good, open shots. We just didn’t make a lot of them. So, how do you win a basketball game on a night where the shot’s not going down? You have to find another category. …
“We basically played a six-turnover game for about 39 1/2 minutes. So that just gave us more shots on goal, so we got more shots than the opponent. That was really the difference in the game offensively.”
Queens (7-6) led the game 15-13 with about 12:30 left in the first half, but Ole Miss finished the period on a 25-18 run and led by five at halftime. Queens shot 52% from the field in the first half and hit 6 of 14 from behind the 3-point line. Eleven of the Royals’ 23 made field goals Saturday were 3-pointers.
The Royals cut the Rebels’ lead to three less than six minutes into the second half on a 3-pointer from Maban Jabriel. Ole Miss used seven straight points from Pedulla to go back up double-digits. Ole Miss outscored Queens 14-5 over the final 5:57 of the game.
The Rebels forced 21 Queens turnovers and outscored the Royals 42-24 in the paint.
“We took a lot of threes, but I think in the second half, and then the last 10 minutes in particular, we really tried to get into the paint,” Pedulla said. “ … I think that kind of opened things up for us.”
The Rebels play at Memphis on Saturday at 1 p.m. The game will be broadcast on ESPN 2.
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