NCAA Tournament: How Did Ole Miss' Loss to Mississippi State Affect Bracket Forecast?

The Ole Miss Rebels fell a spot in the NCAA Tournament projections after a loss to Mississippi State.

Feb 15, 2025; Oxford, Mississippi, USA; Mississippi Rebels guard Matthew Murrell (11) drives to the basket as Mississippi State Bulldogs guard Riley Kugel (2) defends during the second half at The Sandy and John Black Pavilion at Ole Miss. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images | Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

No. 24 Ole Miss Rebels men's basketball is still working to pave its way to the NCAA Tournament, but the team's seeding projection took a hit in the latest installment of bracketology that was released on Tuesday.

The Rebels are now projected to be a 6-seed in the South (Atlanta) portion of the bracket, joining 3-seed Wisconsin, 11-seed UC San Diego and 14-seed Towson in Milwaukee. This is down from the projection of a 5-seed that Ole Miss held before its weekend loss to Mississippi State.

In total, the Rebels are one of 13 SEC teams to be featured in the projections from Joe Lunardi, the most of any conference. The Big Ten comes in second place with 10 representatives.

After the loss to Mississippi State over the weekend, all of Ole Miss' starting five was made available to the media, and they discussed what went wrong against the rivals from Starkville as well as a negative trend in level of play that they had seen from themselves in the games leading up to the matchup against the Bulldogs.

"I thought we haven't really been playing our best ever since that second half against Kentucky," guard Sean Pedulla said. "I feel like since then, it's been on a steady decline. When you play a team that's playing for a lot right now and playing as competitive as they are, it's going to show like it did today. They were definitely the more aggressive team today in pretty much every category."

Ole Miss is off in midweek action before it looks to reverse this trend this weekend on the road against Vanderbilt. Tip-off in Nashville is set for 2:30 p.m. CT on SEC Network.