Ole Miss basketball coach Chris Beard said the Rebels would have to bring their best performance of the season on the road to beat Tennessee.

Instead, the Rebels brought one of their worst.

The No. 5 Volunteers overwhelmed No. 19 Ole Miss on both ends of the court, handing Beard's team its first loss of the season in a 90-64 affair at Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center on Saturday night.

The hosts delivered a powerful initial blow that sent Ole Miss reeling for the game's first 10 minutes. Leaning on the stout defense that coach Rick Barnes has used to develop Tennessee (11-3, 1-0 SEC) into a yearly factor in the SEC title race, the Vols held Ole Miss to six points in the game's first 9:46.

Facing a 12-point climb early, the Rebels (13-1, 0-1) never truly recovered. Ole Miss managed to keep the game respectable in the first half, trading blows with the Vols before a pair of late 3-pointers by Jahmai Mashack extended the Ole Miss deficit to nine points by halftime.

The Rebels folded out of the break. By the under-16 timeout of the second half, Tennessee had doubled its advantage, and the outcome never was in doubt again.

Ole Miss basketball can't deliver defensively

Winning on the road against the SEC's elite tier is nearly impossible without playing strong defense. Beard arrived in Oxford this offseason with a reputation for building elite defensive teams.

Despite their strong start, the defensive side of the court has not quite clicked for the Rebels, who have often won in spite of a flimsy defense.

That caught up with them against Tennessee. The Vols shot 47% from the field and outscored the Rebels 42-30 in the paint.

Ole Miss saw another one of its flaws exposed as it failed to keep Tennessee off the glass. The Vols outrebounded the Rebels 47-24 and finished with 22 second-chance points in a dominant interior effort, powered by 24 from big man Jonas Aidoo to lead all scorers.

Rebels' star power sputters

The Vols also succeeded in muting the Rebels' two primary scoring threats.

Matthew Murrell and Allen Flanigan, who entered Saturday averaging 17 and 16.7 points, respectively, finished with just 19 combined. They were outscored by Tennessee's bench.

Jaemyn Brakefield turned in one of the best games of his career, collecting 22 points on 7-for-8 shooting. But without the punch typically provided by the Rebels' big guns, his effort went to waste.

Up next

Ole Miss returns home to take on Florida on Wednesday (8 p.m., SEC Network). The Gators opened their conference slate with a narrow home loss to Kentucky.

David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.

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This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Ole Miss basketball throttled by Tennessee in first loss under Chris Beard