Ole Miss Guard Ilias Kamardine's Fearless Shot-Making Sunk Crimson Tide in SEC Tournament

NASHVILLE -- Basketball is a make-or-miss game. On Friday night in Bridgestone Arena, two-seed Alabama was upset by 15-seed Ole Miss 80-79 in a game the Rebels outshot the Crimson Tide and sent Nate Oats' program home from Nashville after just one game.

The Rebels shot 51-percent from the floor in the second half to take a six point lead at the break. Ole Miss slowed down its shot-making in the second half, but were uplifted by Ilias Kamardine who went 6-for-11 (54-percent), scoring 14 points and making an absurd 3-point shot as the shot clock was winding down to extend Ole Miss' lead from four to six points.

"I just watch the shot clock and I see two second remaining," Kamardine said. "There is no way I don't shoot the ball. I just shoot it. It went in. That's good for us."

Kamardine finished the night with 16 points, six rebounds and four assists, differing to his teammates in the first, but taking over in the second to push the Rebels into the SEC Tournament semifinals.

"That was the game plan, especially because we know the big going to play defense on me one moment of the game," Kamardine said. "I just tried to be aggressive and play my game, control the game, and make the right play on the right moment.

The Rebels shot a higher percentage from the field, and outshot Alabama from the three-point line, leaving the Crimson Tide with a sense of helplessness on the defensive end. The Alabama players said the message was to defend the shots with more intensity and rely on the percentages to flip into their favor.

"Obviously, over the course of the game, it's pretty hard to make those shots every single time down the floor," Latrell Wrightsell said. "Continue to force those shots, continue to keep a hand up, but obviously our intensity and pressure within the defense had to pick up, and it did, and they were like a .8 in the second half. We did a pretty good job with continuing to make them make tough shots. It's just down the stretch when you're down 13 points, and they hit one or two of the 10 they were making in the first half. One or two shots, like the shots Karmadine hit at the end of the shot clock, hurts it bad."

The Rebels field goal percentage did regress in the second half, but the Crimson Tide's did the same and Alabama was unable to overcome the halftime deficit and advance to Saturday's semifinals, but Ole Miss's shot-making didn't catch Alabama off guard after they'd won two games in the two prior days.

"If you watch the games before they were making tough shots," Wrightsell said. "Malik Dia was making really good shots. AJ Storr, too. You don't get this far, especially in the SEC, without making big shots and winning, and they won two games in a row as a 15-seed, and they were supposed to lose yesterday. So you don't get to this spot without making tough shots. They had some tough shot making, and they're a really good team."

Alabama was able to cut the Rebels's lead to four or fewer five different times in the second half, but Ole Miss answered the bell every time down the floor and re-extended the lead to win their third game in three days.

"Tonight I saw a lot of courage," Chris Beard said, "One specific thing I will not forget. Alabama has a drastic game plan where they put their big on Ilias. He got a big, wide-open three and missed it. The next time down, he had the courage to take it again. Basketball, percentages are going to always even out. That's something I will never forget about tonight's game, a lesser player may have turned down that second open look. They are basically begging him to shoot at that point. So a lot of respect for Ilias having the courage to take that shot."

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