Ole Miss basketball travels to No. 2 Auburn with Rebels limping to finish

Ole Miss basketball has four games remaining in the regular season with its next game coming up Wednesday night at No. 2 Auburn.

The Rebels (13-14, 4-10 SEC) are likely to have a sub-.500 record when it’s all said and done as Ole Miss faces Texas A&M, Kentucky and Vanderbilt to finish out the season. While TAMU and Vandy are home games, winning those two games would only put the Rebels at 15-16 and 6-12 in the SEC without massive upsets in the other two conference games.

That being said, this team has been unlucky from an injury standpoint for sure, but there was also a stretch against Florida, South Carolina and Missouri when this team could have gelled and won a few games. If this squad is sitting at .500 in the SEC and 16-11 overall, I think most fans wouldn’t be ecstatic, but it would be a tolerable outcome.

It seems very likely there will be a lot of pressure on the Ole Miss athletic leadership to revamp head coach Kermit Davis’ staff at the very least or possibly even make a change with the head coach depending on how the season finishes out.

Davis has certainly shown the ability to recruit with Matthew Murrell, Daeshun Ruffin, and Jaemyn Brakefield all being added in the last two years. There just does not seem to be the offensive spark this season to get the Rebels through the grind of SEC play - how much of that lays at the feet of the head coach differs from fan to fan. In my opinion, I could see Davis getting one more season with this young core group of players to really turn things around, but it would be a very sizable risk.

Ole Miss basketball hasn’t been in this kind of funk since the latter Rod Barnes years when the program had four straight losing seasons. I don’t think there will be that level of patience, however, for Davis. At his previous head coach position at Middle Tennessee State, Kermit had nine seasons without hardly any postseason success before having six straight seasons with postseason bids including three NCAA tournament bids.

The Rebels do have an NCAA tournament appearance and an NIT appearance in the last four years, so credit where it’s due I don’t think coach Davis is a bad coach. I do think it’s time for some changes to be made somewhere to get this program back level again and out of the SEC basement.