Davis, Rebels to learn about each other on trip to Canada
Kermit Davis’ first road trip as Ole Miss’ coach begins Saturday when the Rebels travel to Canada for a four-game, six-day trip north of the border.
The NCAA allows basketball teams to take an international trip every four years. Ole Miss begins its tour in Montreal against McGill University on Sunday. On Monday, the Rebels will remain in Montreal to face Concordia University. Concordia fell to fell to McGill in the RSEQ Championship Game last season.
Ole Miss will then travel to Ottawa for two more games. The Rebels will face Carleton University on Wednesday and then the University of Ottawa on Thursday night.
Trips are allowed to last up to 10 days, but Ole Miss will return to Oxford on Friday.
“As a staff, we’ve got so much work to do in recruiting,” Davis said. “You go offshore or get really away, it makes it tough on communication in the recruiting period. I want our guys to get back and have eight or nine days off when we get back to school.”
The games do not count toward the 2018-19 campaign, but it does provide an early opportunity for a team that features just six veterans and could rely on five true freshman and two junior college transfers to gel against quality competition.
“Our team has been, for the most part, receptive to coaching,” Davis said. “We’ve put them through some pretty demanding practices. …I’ve been really pleased with their effort. It’s a good group to come to the locker room with. Their attitudes have been really, really good. It’s just a like a lot of teams right now, especially a brand new team. We’ve just got a lot of work ahead of us in a lot of different areas.”
Davis said he’s been putting his team through two practices a day in preparation for the trip, one a full, physical practice and another that is more of a walk-through/review.
“It’s been kind of a whirlwind for a staff and our players, but it’s been good,” Davis said. “What these trips do is they fast-forward you to try to get through a lot of different things.”
Davis said the Rebels “won’t be a finished product, by any means,” during the trip to Canada, but he said the games and the experience should help the Rebels in October and November. Ole Miss opens the season on Nov. 10 against Western Michigan at the Pavilion at Ole Miss.
“Our team is not great right now at playing through pockets of adversity,” Davis said, “fatigue and things that a lot of teams go through. When you go on these foreign trips, you can play bad and just win. Teams aren’t very organized. These teams in Canada are organized. The first team we’re playing won four games against Division I basketball. Carelton has beaten a who’s who of college basketball. You’ve got to play. A lot of our guys will have great experiences but they’ll be exposed, as young players do.”
Most importantly, Davis said, the trip will provide the Ole Miss players a real opportunity to expect what the new coaching staff demands of them during games.
“You can say it in practice but until a guy comes out of a game and doesn’t go back in a game for a period of time, he doesn’t really understand,” Davis said. “I think our team will learn a lot of different things and I’m going to learn a lot about our team.”