NFL Tickets
Don’t pencil the BYU Cougars into the next round of your bracket just yet. In fact, don’t even write down the Cougars at all. The Ole Miss Rebels just stunned the 45 people that tuned in to TruTV Tuesday night with a 94-90 victory over BYU.
What’s next for the Rebels is a dance with the Xavier Musketeers on Thursday afternoon, the second straight game in which Ole Miss should be an underdog. After erasing a 17-point deficit against the Cougars though, the term ‘underdog’ should be wielded with caution. If Ole Miss could beat a team 17 spots superior in the Ken Pomeroy rankings, then who says the Rebels can’t hang with Xavier?
What To Watch For
I hate to get caught up in the moment, but this matchup now revolves around Stefan Moody and just how Xavier will prepare for the Rebels’ junior guard in under 48 hours. Moody put up 26 points with five helpers against a favored BYU team, and is likely to still be limber when the Rebels take the floor for Round of 64.
Xavier plays an unselfish brand of basketball, but the Musketeers defense is quite sloppy, so bad that it’s ranked 202nd among Division I schools. Unless this metric meltdown is resolved by 1:10 PM EST Thursday, Xavier will have a tough time staying with Moody over the entire 94 feet.
Prediction
Ole Miss will travel from Dayton, Ohio to Jacksonville, Florida and will somehow play as if it’s a home game. Expect the Rebels to notch a second upset (if you can truly call it that), and for Moody to be administering heat-checks from tip-off to hand shake — hoisting even more trays than the nine launched against BYU. The Musketeers’ defense couldn’t stop another team if that team were playing uphill, so the Rebels will have no problem sustaining this new-found frenetic tempo.
Ole Miss 81 Xavier 68
Jerry Landry is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow Jerry on Twitter at @Jerry2Landry, “Like” him on Facebook or add him on Google.
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