MILWAUKEE — Ole Miss guard Matthew Murrell wore sunglasses in a joyous locker room Sunday night, after his Rebels team — and the SEC — ended the first weekend of the men’s NCAA tournament with swagger and style.
The sixth-seeded Rebels thumped No. 3 seed Iowa State 91-78 at Fiserv Forum, advancing to their first Sweet 16 since 2001, the only other in team history. Ole Miss also became the seventh SEC team to reach the Sweet 16, setting a tournament record. The ACC previously held the mark for most Sweet 16 teams from one league when it had six in the 2016 event.
“It shows the SEC, if it wasn’t the best, it’s one of the best conferences of all time,” said Murrell, who scored 15 points in Sunday’s win. “You can say what you want to say, but you’ve got seven guys taking up almost half of the Sweet 16, it’s something special.”
Despite being the second-lowest-seeded SEC team to reach the Sweet 16, ahead of 10-seed Arkansas, Ole Miss left no doubt, leading the Cyclones by as many as 26 points and registering its largest margin of victory in an NCAA tournament game. Murrell described the SEC as “a dogfight every night,” which helped prepare its teams for March.
The SEC set an NCAA tournament record with 14 teams gaining berths. The league easily eclipsed the former mark of 11 by the Big East in 2011. But that year, only two Big East teams advanced to the Sweet 16.
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“We set the objective really high,” Ole Miss second-year coach Chris Beard said. “We want to go in the tournament. We want to have a good seed. We want to be one of those teams that has a chance to win the tournament. And Ole Miss winning the tournament, I don’t know, probable? No. Possible? Absolutely.”
Beard said his team is watching a documentary on the 1983 national championship team from NC State, coached by Jim Valvano. The Wolfpack also were a No. 6 seed in that tournament.
“Players are like, ‘When are we going to finish this?'” Beard said of the documentary. “I’m like, ‘We’re going to finish on Sunday night, right before the Monday [national championship] game. So, it’s not arrogance. It’s absolutely belief. If I didn’t believe this team was capable of continuing to win games in this tournament, then I shouldn’t be the coach at Ole Miss.”
