Ole Miss men’s basketball will return to the SJB Pavilion on Tuesday, March 3, hosting No. 22 Vanderbilt at 8 p.m. The game will be streamed on SEC Network+. Ole Miss enters the contest with a 12-17 record overall and a 4-12 mark in SEC play under head coach Chris Beard, who is in his third season with the program. Vanderbilt, led by Mark Byington in his second year, holds a 22-7 overall record and is 9-7 in conference games.
The teams have faced each other 130 times since their first meeting in 1925. Vanderbilt leads the all-time series 81-49 but Ole Miss has a slight edge when playing at home in Oxford, leading those matchups 34-24. This will be their second meeting of the season; in January, Vanderbilt narrowly defeated Ole Miss 71-68 in Nashville.
Vanderbilt arrives as one of the top offensive teams nationally, averaging nearly 87 points per game and ranking among national leaders for assist-to-turnover ratio and free throw percentage. Four Commodores average double figures in scoring, led by guard Tyler Tanner with an average of 18.5 points per game. Forward Devin McGlockton leads them in rebounding at nearly seven boards per outing.
Mark Byington has guided Vanderbilt to back-to-back seasons with at least 20 wins since joining from James Madison University, where he had notable success including a deep NCAA Tournament run.
For Ole Miss, limiting turnovers continues to be a strength this season. In their last win against Auburn on February’s final weekend, Patton Pinkins scored a season-high 26 points while AJ Storr added another strong performance off the bench with matching points. “In 29 games played this season, Ole Miss has had 10 or less turnovers in 18 contests, including 13 of their 16 SEC games. Their season average of 9.5 turnovers per game is the 20th-best mark in the nation and second in the conference, while their clip of 8.3 per game is the best in the SEC during conference play,” according to team statistics.
Bench production remains high for Ole Miss as they rank among national leaders for bench scoring at over thirty points per game. Senior guard AJ Storr has come off the bench for each of the last fifteen games and averaged almost nineteen points during that span: “Averaging 30.6 points off the bench per game, Ole Miss ranks twenty-fourth in the country and third in the SEC…the SEC Sixth Man of the Year candidate is averaging eighteen points per game in SEC games.”
Freshman Patton Pinkins has also contributed significantly both offensively and by taking care of possessions; he leads all qualifying SEC players averaging at least twenty minutes with only seven turnovers this season.
Defensively, every player who has seen action for Ole Miss this year has recorded at least one block as they average just over four blocks per contest.
Head coach Chris Beard recently achieved his fiftieth victory at Ole Miss following a win over Southern Miss earlier this season—becoming just the thirteenth coach to reach that milestone with the program.
The Rebels are also looking ahead after signing two recruits—Jaron Saulsberry from Georgia and Yohance Connor from North Carolina—for their incoming class of 2026.
