For the first time in nearly five decades, the Ole Miss men’s basketball team will play four consecutive road games as they face Texas on Saturday, February 7. The matchup at the Moody Center is scheduled for 1 p.m. and will be broadcast on ESPN2.
Ole Miss enters the game with an 11-11 record overall and a 3-6 mark in SEC play under head coach Chris Beard, who is in his third season leading the Rebels. Texas holds a 14-9 record and is 5-5 in conference games under first-year head coach Sean Miller.
The two programs have met 16 times since their first contest in 1955. Texas leads the all-time series 9-7 and has won five of seven matchups played in Austin. In their most recent meeting last season, Ole Miss overcame a halftime deficit to win 72-69 at home.
Texas currently ranks tenth in the SEC standings and sits at No. 38 in the NCAA’s NET Rankings and No. 33 on KenPom. Dailyn Swain leads the Longhorns with averages of 17.3 points and 7.3 rebounds per game, while center Matas Vokietaitis adds nearly 15 points per contest and excels at drawing fouls.
Statistically, Texas ranks among national leaders in several categories, including fifth for free throw attempts per game (27), sixth for free throws made (20), thirteenth for rebound margin (+9.2), twenty-sixth for field goal percentage (49.2%), twenty-ninth for fastbreak points (15.3), and twenty-eighth for points per game (85.5).
Sean Miller took over as Texas head coach last March after three years at Xavier, where he also previously coached from 2004 to 2009 before a long tenure at Arizona that included multiple NCAA Tournament appearances.
Ole Miss has focused on ball security this season, recording ten or fewer turnovers in thirteen of its twenty-two games so far—including eight out of nine SEC contests—with an average of just under ten turnovers per game overall.
This stretch marks only the second time since the late seventies that Ole Miss has played four straight road games; they have played away from home in seven of their first ten conference matchups this year.
Senior guard AJ Storr has been instrumental during recent wins against Missouri, Georgia, and Mississippi State—averaging nearly twenty points over his last seven outings—and ranks among SEC scoring leaders during conference play.
In January, Ole Miss achieved its highest-ever point total against a ranked opponent on the road by scoring ninety-seven points to defeat No. 21 Georgia in overtime—a comeback fueled by strong performances from Storr and freshman Patton Pinkins.
Malik Dia has recorded four double-doubles this season while helping anchor Ole Miss’s defense alongside teammates James Scott and Corey Chest; collectively, they average more than four blocks per game as a team.
Pinkins also set a new career high with twenty-five points during an early-season conference opener at Oklahoma—the most by an Ole Miss freshman since November of 2022—and has delivered key plays late in several close victories.
Chris Beard reached fifty wins as Ole Miss head coach earlier this season following a victory over Southern Miss; he is one of only thirteen coaches to achieve that milestone with the program.
Defensively, Kezza Giffa matched a school record by collecting seven steals during a non-conference matchup against St. John’s—an individual performance not seen since November of last year when Matthew Murrell did so versus Grambling State.
Looking ahead, Ole Miss recently added two recruits to its class of 2026: Jaron Saulsberry from Marietta, Georgia—a top-ten player statewide—and Yohance Connor from Charlotte, North Carolina—ranked among his state’s best guards according to major recruiting services.
Follow updates about Ole Miss men’s basketball through their official social media channels on X (@OleMissMBB), Facebook (Ole Miss Men’s Basketball), and Instagram (olemissmbb).
