Rebels Make Late Push but Come Up Short to Purdue, 70-59

The Rebels made a late charge, but the Ole Miss women’s basketball team ended up falling short to a hot-handed Purdue team, 70-59, at the Paradise Jam on Friday night.

Ole Miss (3-3) and Purdue (5-1) took the game out at an incredible pace, scoring a combined 41 points in the first quarter as the Rebels trailed only 22-19 at the end of the first frame. Purdue, however, stymied the Rebels to just 2-of-12 from the field in the second quarter toward a 38-24 halftime lead – a hole Ole Miss couldn’t recover from despite winning the second half overall.

In that first quarter, Ole Miss shot an absurd 69.2 percent from the field, the highest in a single quarter by the Rebels since shooting 77.8 in the fourth quarter at Arkansas last season on Dec. 31, 2017. Ole Miss shot a season-high 44.8 percent for the entire game, but it wasn’t enough to counteract the second quarter woes and a Boilermaker team that went 7-of-21 from beyond the arc.

The Rebels showed resilience in the later stages of the game, though, winning the second half, 35-32, and the fourth quarter, 19-11. In that final quarter, Ole Miss ripped off a 15-1 run to claw its way back into the game, coming within eight points with just 2:32 left to play. Senior Crystal Allen led the charge, scoring seven of her 13 points in the fourth.

For Allen, it’s her sixth-straight double-digit game in as many tries as a Rebel, and she moves to 924 career points scored. Fellow senior La’Karis Salter nearly recorded her second career double-double with 11 points and nine rebounds, while junior Jhileiya Dunlap added in 10 points and four rebounds for her second double-digit effort of her Ole Miss career.

Ole Miss closes out its stay in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the 2018 Paradise Jam tomorrow with a tilt against St. John’s at 4:30 p.m. CT. St. John’s is coming off a tight 10-point loss to UConn this evening at 65-55 – the first time UConn has been held to less than 80 points this season and just the fifth time in the last four seasons the Huskies have been held to less than 70.

Courtesy of Ole Miss Sports