Ole Miss hosts No. 18 Memphis & a Miami coaching circus update
A big basketball game in Oxford, the Miami saga and fake southern accents
Hope everyone is having a good Friday. We’ve got a new podcast out that begins with an Ole Miss Hoops check-in with Bracken Ray ahead of the Rebels’ game against No. 18 Memphis tomorrow, followed by an interview with The Athletics’ USC beat writer Antonio Morales on the Lincoln Riley hire, what it means for the PAC 12 and whether the Trojans can catch up to modern college football. You can check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
We’ll preview the basketball game and quickly hit a couple of other topics today.
Rebels have opportunity for quality win
As we discussed yesterday, Ole Miss hasn’t done much to shirk last year’s stigma of an offensively-challenged team that is often hard to watch, but Saturday would be a chance to do that with a win over the 18th-ranked Tigers. Memphis is coming off a borderline inexplicable loss at Georgia on Wednesday night. The Bulldogs entered the game on a four-game losing streak that included a double-digit defeat to a bad Virginia team, a 16-point loss to Northwestern and a loss to Wofford.
I have no clue what to make of Memphis’ loss other than chalking it up to a bad night. But Penny Hardaway used it as an opportunity to send a message to his team.
He later went on to call the performance “like an AAU game.” These comments sort of mirror the perceived issue with Hardaway’s teams at Memphis — immensely talented but not a cohesive unit. Don’t mistake that for the old man ‘team conquers the individual’ take. If you’ve watched Memphis play over the last 18 months, it’s easy to tell how disjointed it looks when it is going bad. This team is no different. The Tigers signed the No. 1 recruiting class in the country last year, headlined by true freshmen Emoni Bates and Jalen Duran. This team is athletic as hell and dangerous in the front court.
Their guards are a bit smaller, which could be an opportunity for Ole Miss to create some turnovers via the 1-3-1 and create easy offense in transition. Georgia slowed the game down in the second half and sort of lulled Memphis to sleep defensively. I don’t know if the Rebels are good enough in half-court offense to do that. But there does seem to be opportunity to turn defense to offense.
I am also curious to see how much man defense Kermit Davis plays. This will be a little bit of a preview of SEC play. Memphis more talented than Ole Miss. The Tigers are tough to match up with in the front court. How much man versus zone we see tomorrow could potentially be telling with regard to conference play.
Ole Miss needs some sort of spark. I don’t necessarily think it gets it tomorrow, but I am curious to see how they hold up in this game. It should be a pretty good crowd too.
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Miami coaching circus update
I spent a lot of time on this yesterday, if you wish to go back and read. I am not going to turn this into a daily update. I am sort of tired of this story already but it is relevant given some recent movement in this saga.
He dropped the ‘Slater Scoop’ this time, so we can’t be too sure how serious this is. Jokes aside, it appears Miami is not going to wait on an athletic director hire to try to bring home alum and current Oregon coach Mario Cristobal. About 20 minutes after this nugget dropped, news of a counter from Oregon broke.
Oregon plays Utah in the PAC-12 Championship game tonight. I imagine that you’ll see a bit of a bidding war between the two programs over the next 24-48 hours. This column from the Oregonian adds some well-reported context to the situation.
Also, this news broke just as I am typing this sentence and I am too lazy to go fix the entire structure of this content note, so just enjoy the live-look at the hamster wheel in my brain and try to keep up.
Maybe Miami has a one-two punch plan and does in-fact have an AD in line. Who the hell knows.
The point is that if you are an Ole Miss fan that doesn’t want to lose Lane Kiffin, you should be rooting for Miami to win this bidding war and for its search not to extend past Cristobal. Because if it does, the focus will turn squarely to Lane Kiffin, or at least that seems likely. I have no idea how a potential new AD from Clemson could change the pecking order with regard to a list of targets. How do you handicap this bidding battle? Well, I imagine having Phil Knight in their corner of the ring would make Oregon a pretty heavy favorite, but similar to the Kiffin-Miami dynamic, nuance is needed here. Money isn’t everything. Miami is home for Cristobal. There are murmurs of his wife not loving Oregon from a distance-from-home standpoint as well as a political standpoint. I don’t do politics here, but it is not exactly a well-kept secrete the COVID policies the state of Oregon have play a role in all of this.
I have no clue how this will shake out, but it does seem clear now that a run at Cristobal will be made, and if it is an unsuccessful one, Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin will enter the spotlight next. Buckle up.
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Brian Kelly’s fake southern accent is very on-brand Brian Kelly
Yesterday, we talked about Brian Kelly leaving Notre Dame, how he did it and why we all hate departures no matter how they happen. Judging the reaction from players, current and former, you could get the sense that most weren’t surprised and viewed Kelly as a guy who is all about Brian Kelly, above all else. Well, a couple of other pieces of evidence emerged yesterday. The first was a crime that should be punishable by death.
Brian Kelly gave a speech at halftime of the LSU women’s basketball game and decided to whip out a horrific imitation of a southern accent. He was deservedly torched by the internet for it too. A couple of things.
Faking a southern accent is one of the most cringeworthy moves anyone can make. The success rate is almost zero. Hell, Hollywood does a terrible job of it most of the time and I am always impressed by the few actors who pull it off without making my ears bleed. I have no idea why people continue to try this.
Everyone acts like southern accents are all the same, which isn’t close to true. If you go into it with that mindset, then your success rate is less than zero, if that’s even possible.
This is so hilariously on-brand. Nothing screams genuineness more than a native Masshole adopting a horrible southern accent two days after accepting a job in Louisiana.
What’s next? Will he claim to be of Cajun descent? Will he talk about his grandmother’s crawfish pie recipe? Will he begin to drink regularly before 9 a.m.? Maybe he will blare Born on the Bayou every morning on the way to work.
At the end of the day, none of this is that serious and I feel silly overanalyzing it. But I do think it is indicative of a guy who is not the most genuine and may not be comfortable in his own skin. I remember a coach Ole Miss had a few years ago that behaved in a similar manner. In fact, he staged his own funeral at a practice one time. I don’t know what happened to him. We lost contact when he went on a trip to Tampa.
But anyway, I find how all of this has played out on the Notre Dame side fascinating. The Irish made defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman their new head coach after just one year with the program. The players lobbied hard for a guy they seem to love.
I do not believe the caption to be an accident, either. Interesting stuff.
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On the horizon:
Sunday pod with Weldon. The Playoff will be set and Ole Miss will know its opponent.
Football, hoops, golf, coaching search stuff and whatever else is on my mind in next week’s newsletters
That’s all from me today. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Send to you friends and tell them to join in on the fun by smashing the subscribe button below. It is free.