Notes: Davis wants Rebels to let Auburn 'see what we are'

OXFORD — Kermit Davis never wanted to put a timetable on it.

He just knew he wanted to put a team on the floor that Ole Miss fans would embrace and appreciate. He wanted to turn The Pavilion at Ole Miss into a boisterous arena that would be difficult for opponents.

Just 13 games into his tenure at Ole Miss, Davis is nowhere near the finish line, but on Wednesday night, he’s going to a glimpse of what he’s hoping to see one day.

Ole Miss entertains No. 12 Auburn Wednesday at 6 p.m., and with the Rebels on an eight-game winning streak and coming off a 10-point win at Vanderbilt Saturday, the Rebels’ arena should be rocking.

“We know we have a lot of work ahead of us, but yeah, that’s exactly why you want to come to Ole Miss and coach in the SEC,” Davis said. “You get these kinds of games on national TV against a team that can maybe go to the Final Four in front of hopefully a sellout in your building. That’s really what you do it for.”

Ole Miss will be an underdog Wednesday and then again on Saturday when it travels to face No. 15 Mississippi State in Starkville. Davis said he won’t approach the game as an underdog. Instead, he’ll simply urge his team to continue to replicate in games what it does in practice.

“Let them see what we are,” Davis said. “Don’t go out there and try to do things we haven’t done. We did it a little bit against Vanderbilt early and I’m really looking forward to seeing the crowd on Wednesday night. I’m looking forward to seeing a home-court advantage against a top-10 or top-12 team on a Wednesday night on national TV. It doesn’t get any better than that this early in the year. I think we all want to be right in the middle of it, so I’m really looking forward to watching our guys compete in that arena.”

As for the Tigers, they’re 11-2 entering their SEC opener. Bruce Pearl’s team has lost to Duke in Hawai’i and at North Carolina State. Their wins include victories over Washington, Arizona, Xavier and Dayton.

Auburn “looks like a team that could play in the Final Four,” Davis said. "They have depth, great experienced guards, really athletic. They kind of play, in some ways, an unconventional style that kind of causes teams problems. When you look at their team, I’m big on extra possessions, and they lead on every extra possession category in the SEC — steals, blocks, turnover margin, offensive rebounds. We’ll have our hands full just from a physical standpoint trying to rebound the ball. …The Auburn game is obviously a real big test. They’re as physical and talented as maybe any team in the country besides maybe Duke, and you watch that game (in Hawai’i in November) and that game is a five- or six-point game in the last two or three minutes. I’m looking forward to it.”

This Auburn team, Davis said, reminds him of some of Pearl’s teams at the end of his tenure at Tennessee.

“They’re just well-coached,” Davis said. “They rebound the ball. They guard at a high level and it’s just a team, when you play them like in a big game on Wednesday night, you’re going to get their very best. They do a lot of things well.”

Breein Tyree is the reining SEC Player of the Week after scoring 31 points in the Rebels’ win in Nashville. Terence Davis is the most recognizable player on the Ole Miss roster. The MVP, however, might be point guard Devontae Shuler, who has excelled in his new role in recent weeks. Shuler had 11 points, seven rebounds and six assists at Vanderbilt, committing just two turnovers and making up for those with two steals.

“We thought Franco (Miller) would compete with Devontae for the starting point guard position and at worse would be our backup,” Davis said, referring to the freshman from the Bahamas who will miss this season while he recovers from a knee injury. "He’s been safe with the ball. He’s been really safe the last five games — maybe 3 1/2 (assists) to one (turnover). Sometimes we had some guys open on some set plays (at Vanderbilt) and he didn’t pull the trigger on it. He’s almost trying to be safe and that’s not a bad thing for Devontae. He’s probably the most valuable player on his team just because there’s not a lot of depth behind him.”

Foul trouble was a problem for Terence Davis last season, and in Saturday’s conference opener, Davis picked up two early first-half fouls and then two quick second-half fouls. He scored 11 points in 21 minutes and played a huge role in the Rebels’ win, but his propensity to foul is once again a concern.

The problem, Kermit Davis said, is the Rebels’ senior guard is reaching — and he’s reaching a lot.

“He can be a great defender and he’ll just go undisciplined for a couple of plays and it set him down,” Davis said. “We look at it and we look at all the fouls. He played a lot smarter over the last eight minutes. He got close on one occasion and they called it on (Dominik Olejniczak). Both guys fouled him, and Dom did hit him first, but you’ve just got to stay disciplined. You’ve got to stay in a stance, and when he does, then he’s not just trying to use his athletic ability to recover and reach because he didn’t stay in his stance and he didn’t play with a lot of detail offensively. It’s obvious, but when he stays in his stance, he’s a really good defender.”

Those eight-plus foul-free minutes, Kermit Davis hopes, will prove to be a positive reinforcement moving forward, for the Rebels need Davis on the floor as much as possible.

“You need your best players to be able to play with three fouls, four fouls with time and trust them,” Davis said. “I thought that was big for TD to do that and we couldn’t have won the game without him.”

Tyree’s excellence didn’t start on Saturday night at Memorial Gym. Instead, the junior guard has been impressing his coaches and teammates for months now.

“He’s matured so much,” Davis said. “He was the student-athlete of the month. He had a 3.4 or a 3.5 (GPA) in the fall. So his life is real simple. He’s maturing in those kind of ways. He’s a loud voice in the gym every time you come to practice. All those things _ loud voice, leadership, academics, work ethic _ if you’ve got talent, then you’ll start seeing it. Sometimes these guys can’t get it all right, but when they all kind of come in line and you get a guy that talented, that’s what you’ll see. You’ll see a guy who’s one of the best players in the SEC. But now, can he repeat the process? Can he handle success and be able to, now that teams are really keying on him, do it every night?”