Ole Miss failed to score in the final 4:26 Sunday in the finals of the ESPN Events Invitational, and that scoring drought proved costly in the Rebels’ 59-55 loss to Oklahoma.
Ole Miss (6-1) led 55-52 after a 7-0 run that included an Amaree Abram 3-pointer, a pretty Abram floater in the lane and a transition dunk from Myles Burns. However, the Rebels didn’t score again.
Oklahoma (6-1), meanwhile, got just enough. Bijan Cortes scored on back to back drives to the basket to put the Sooners ahead, 56-55. Jalen Hill added a bucket in the paint and Tanner Groves added a pair of free throws to give Oklahoma some cushion.
“I feel like we had some easy shots at the rim but didn’t convert,” Abram said. “I thought we executed our plays well. It just didn’t go in.”
“I thought we missed a lot of unbelievable looks,” Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis said. “Matt (Murrell) missed a lot of open looks he normally makes. We missed some shots right at the rim, fumbled some balls late.”
Davis referred to Cortes, Oklahoma’s reserve point guard, as an “unlikely hero.”
“We just couldn’t keep him out of the paint,” Davis said. “Our ball-screen coverage failed us at the end. He got in, made some plays, got over the top, finished some tough balls.
“Still, I thought we had a great chance to win. We’ve got a good team. I told our team it’s a long season and we got better in Orlando.”
Abram led Ole Miss with 17 points and five assists. Fellow freshman guard TJ Caldwell added 10 points. Murrell finished with eight points on 3-for-9 from the floor and 1-for-6 from behind the 3-point line.
Grant Sherfield led Oklahoma with 12 points. Sam Godwin added 11 and Groves and Cortes chipped in 10 each.
Ole Miss shot 45.1 percent from the floor, 33.3 percent from the arc and made all three of its free throws. Oklahoma, conversely, shot 53.5 percent from the floor, 57.1 percent from the arc and was 9-for-13 from the free throw line.
“Our free throw differential this year has been great,” Davis said. “It’s been great in the tournament. I don’t know. We’ll have to go back and look at the tape. Both teams didn’t go much but that was the difference. We have to go back and work and do some things and try to establish ourselves in the post. We used to get to the line a bunch based on offensive rebounding and we didn’t get many of those (just six) tonight.
