Texas basketball (14-7, 3-5 SEC) pushed the No. 23 Ole Miss Rebels (16-5, 5-3 SEC) to the brink tonight in a hard-fought battle in Oxford but fell just short on a missed three-pointer on the game's final possession. Freshman guard Tre Johnson had a chance to tie the game up at 72-72 in the final seconds of the second half, but the ball rimmed out.
Tre Johnson scores a team-high 22 points in Texas basketball's one-score loss to Ole Miss
The three-point loss to the Rebels snaps Texas's two-game winning streak. Ole Miss also ended a three-game losing streak tonight with the win over the Longhorns and head coach Rodney Terry.
Night in and night out, the SEC will bring tough tests the Longhorns' way. This was a tough game for the Longhorns on the road. Texas will get a couple of chances to bounce back with wins in SEC play in the next week or so, against the LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge this coming weekend and the Arkansas Razorbacks in a rivalry game at the Moody Center next Wednesday.
Texas struggled to maintain big leads when it went on sustained scoring runs in both halves against the Rebels tonight. There were 14 lead changes and each team led the game for double-digit minutes.
Here are three takeaways from the Longhorns' 72-69 loss on the road to Ole Miss on Jan. 29.
Texas shows signs of life on the boards
A pretty significant positive takeaway from this game for the Longhorns was the fight this team showed on the glass. Texas came out early with effort and physicality on the glass on both ends of the floor. A season-high eight Longhorns players had multiple rebounds tonight against Ole Miss.
Senior forward Arthur Kaluma led the way with a team-high seven rebounds. Kaluma was huge on the defensive glass for the Longhorns tonight, registering a game-high five defensive boards in the second half.
Center Kadin Shedrick led the way for the Longhorns on the offensive glass, with a game-high four offensive rebounds to help Texas get some key possessions back on the offensive end.
Tonight was the first time the Longhorns won the battle on the boards in SEC play. Texas outrebounded Ole Miss by a margin of 42-33. The Longhorns also won the battle on the offensive boards, nearly doubling up Ole Miss on the offensive glass (14-8).
Turnover battle costs Texas
If there was one statistical category that you could point to say and blame the loss for the Longhorns in this game, it was the turnover margin. Texas was unable to generate turnovers for Ole Miss tonight, with the Rebels having a season-low four turnovers offensively.
Ole Miss edged out Texas in the points off of turnover battle, by a margin of 13-4.
Texas, meanwhile, had 11 turnovers, the most for the Longhorns in a game since the loss to Florida on the road a couple of weeks ago.
In a one-possession game, the nine-point difference in points off turnovers was a huge difference-maker late in this contest for the Longhorns.
Tre Johnson continues to lift the offensive scoring
Johnson scored 20+ points for the second game in a row after putting up a career-high 30 points in Texas's 70-69 win over Texas A&M this past Saturday. After a strong start to the first half, Johnson went cold shooting from the field in the game's final 20 minutes.
Shooting 3-of-9 from the field and 1-of-4 from beyond the arc in the second half, Johnson's scoring efforts down the stretch weren't quite enough to get the Longhorns the road win against Ole Miss.
Make no mistake, Johnson played pretty well tonight. Scoring 22 points on 16 field-goal attempts was not the scorching hot 30 points he scored against A&M last weekend in the win at home, but he did almost single-handedly keep Texas's offensive scoring efforts going for some stretches of the second half. He scored over twice as many points as the Longhorns' second-leading scorer in the second half, which was Kaluma with five second-half points.
Kaluma and Shedrick provided some decent secondary scoring for the Longhorns, combining for 21 points on over 50 percent shooting from the field tonight. But Texas needed more from its other quality scoring guards in this game on the offensive end, namely junior guard Jordan Pope and senior guard Tramon Mark.