‘Kind of spectacular.’ Kentucky faces unique challenge in SEC’s leading scorer.
Something will have to give when Kentucky plays Ole Miss on Saturday. UK has one of the best defenses in the Southeastern Conference and the nation. The Cats rank first in league play in holding opponents to 37.8-percent shooting, and 17th overall in Division I at 38.4 percent.
And Ole Miss has Breein Tyree, the SEC’s leading scorer in league play with an average of 24.5 points per game.
Tyree has Kentucky’s attention. “My man has had three 30-point games in the last four,” UK Coach John Calipari said on his radio show Wednesday night.
That was a slight exaggeration. Tyree has scored 30 or more in two of the Rebels’ last three games and three of the last eight.
On Tuesday, Tyree scored a career-high 40 points in an 83-58 rout of rival Mississippi State. Perhaps making it more remarkable, he credited early foul trouble — two fouls inside the first three minutes — as inspirational rather than unnerving.
“The two early fouls woke me up,” he said after the game. “That got me mad. And sometimes when you play mad, you play better.”
Ole Miss Coach Kermit Davis is a believer.
“His last two or three games have been kind of spectacular … ,” Davis said Tyree. “His stats are good. But he’s not one of these guys who is just a volume-volume shooter, and is just scoring because he shoots so many times.”
In SEC games, Tyree has the fifth-best shooting percentage (47.2 percent) and the second-best accuracy from three-point range (44.3 percent).
Tyree, a 6-foot-2 senior, has something of a throw-back quality to his game. Not only does he score in the analytically correct way (with three-point shots and drives to the basket), he also takes and makes mid-range jump shots.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever had a guy that as a guard just goes and gets 40,” said Davis, who started his coaching career as a Mississippi State assistant in 1982. “Not at all three levels like that. He scored at every level. I’ve been coaching a long time. That’s probably the best I’ve ever seen.”
Davis said that Tyree was “kind of built to score since high school.”
That could have been a tribute to the player’s father. Growing up in Somerset, New Jersey, Tyree could go to the gym and shoot any time he wanted. That’s because his father, Mark Tyree, was a physical education teacher at the school. The elder Tyree considered this work time, not play time. The importance of the mid-range jumper, which has fallen out of favor (just ask Tyler Herro), was a teaching point for Mark Tyree.
“It was something my dad stressed to me a lot when I was younger, just raising up,” Breein Tyree told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal before the season. “It’s something I’ve been working on since I was really young. And it’s helped me since I got to college.”
Tyree said his quickness made defenders conscious of blunting drives to the basket, thus creating the opportunity for a pull-up jumper.
“I really think he’s got as good a mid-range game as anybody in college basketball,” Davis said.
But the Ole Miss coach has acknowledged the need to lighten the scoring load that Tyree carries. He said more contributions from other players have helped the Rebels win their last three games and four of the last six.
“I know a guy gets 40, what kind of balance is that?” Davis said of the victory over Mississippi State. “But other guys are starting to play better.”
During a telecast of an Ole Miss game earlier this season, a broadcaster said that Tyree seemed to be starting to relax and play better after appearing to feel pressure to perform. This has been a subject of “long conversations” between player and coach, Davis said.
“He got out of the gates, and then didn’t shoot it particularly great by Breein’s standards, and started pressing a little bit,” the Ole Miss coach said. Davis advised Tyree to enjoy this senior season.
Of course, Kentucky’s defense this season has made scoring a challenge for opponents.
“I think they’re one of the very best defensive teams in the country,” the Ole Miss coach said.
During the radio show, Kentucky associate coach Kenny Payne spoke of multiple UK defenders taking turns guarding Tyree.
“Hopefully, we can do a good job on him,” Payne said. “But, right now the kid is really hot.”
Saturday
Ole Miss at No. 12 Kentucky
When: 2 p.m.
TV: ESPN
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Ole Miss 13-11 (4-7 SEC), Kentucky 19-5 (9-2)
Series: Kentucky leads 107-13.
Last meeting: Kentucky won 80-76 on March 5, 2019, at Oxford, Miss.
