OXFORD — Ole Miss defeated Temple, 63-55 on Saturday at the Sandy and John Black Pavilion, bouncing back from a midweek loss to UCF.

Junior guard Matthew Murrell led Ole Miss in scoring with 21 points. The Rebels also got 17 points from sophomore guard Daeshun Ruffin.

“Give Temple credit they came out and played really hard,” Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis said. “We just had so many balls right at the rim, at three and four feet, that we bobbled and fumbled. We got some looks that we liked, even Matt got some looks that he liked. I thought the second half was a lot better. It was great to see Daeshun play a clean game.”

Ole Miss (8-3) held the Owls (6-6) to 55 points on 30 percent shooting for the game. Sophomore Temple guard Khalif Battle came into the day averaging 19.4 points per game, but only had 15 on 4-for-17 shooting from the field.

“I thought Matt did a really great job on Battle,” Davis said. “Matt really wanted to guard him. Battle is an elite guard in college basketball and he held him to four for 17 from the field. It was a tough game, a game kind of like SEC games will be. We have to get prettier on offense, but I really liked our effort.”

Ole Miss struggled shooting the basketball once again on Saturday, shooting 38 percent from the field and 18 percent from 3-point range. Ole Miss also turned the ball over 11 times in the contest.

“You always want to take high percentage looks,” Murrell said. “Sometimes they’re not going to fall, but you just have to keep shooting since they’re high percentage, and eventually you’re going to make more than you miss.”

Ole Miss returns to action at 2 p.m. Tuesday against North Alabama.