'Stay the Course!' Chris Beard On Ole Miss' Rebounding Success Against 'Really Good' Gators

The Ole Miss Rebels held their own in the rebounding department against one of the best rebounding teams in college basketball on Wednesday.

The Ole Miss Rebels put up a record-breaking performance in a 103-85 win over the Florida Gators on Wednesday night at the SJB Pavilion, and a large credit for that win comes down to rebounding.

After a poor rebounding performance in a blowout loss to the Tennessee Volunteers on Saturday night, the Rebels (14-1, 1-1 SEC) were able to keep up with the Gators on the boards on Wednesday, trading blows with one of the top rebounding teams in the sport.

Ole Miss only led 44-40 at halftime against Florida, but head coach Chris Beard's message to the team at the intermission had a specific emphasis.

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"Just stay the course," Beard said. "The game within the game tonight was several things, but rebounding was one of them, and I thought we did a good job rebounding in the first half and held our own in the second half. To me, it's always a 40-minute game, so I didn't like the way we finished the game the last seven or eight minutes on defense. Too much fouling, and the rebounding became an issue late."

Although the ending wasn't exactly what he was looking for defensively, Beard saw his team shoot over 59 percent from the floor and 40 percent from three, good enough to give the Rebels a tie for the most points scored in a single game ever by a Chris Beard-coached team.

"Give our guys a lot of credit," Beard said. "I thought for the first 30 minutes of the game, we responded and did a little bit better job on the backboards against a really good rebounding team. There's no denying that Florida is one of the best rebounding teams in college basketball."

Ole Miss Dominates Florida in Home SEC Opener

The Rebels will wrestle with the Vanderbilt Commodores at home this weekend in a 12 p.m. CT tip-off. The game will be televised on SEC Network.