By Steve Irvine
October 28, 2026
OXFORD, Miss. – UAB didn’t finish the exhibition season with a win over an SEC team but the Blazers did find more positives in their trip to Oxford, Mississippi than they did last week’s visit to Nashville.
A week ago, the Blazers were dominated throughout in a lopsided loss to Vanderbilt. On Tuesday night, the Blazers led Ole Miss at halftime and kept it close for a large portion before the Rebels closed with a flourish in a 92-78 victory for the home team at the Pavilion at Ole Miss.
“You know, you’re on the road against an SEC opponent, who’s obviously a little out of our weight class in a lot of regards,” UAB head coach Andy Kennedy, who returned to Ole Miss for the first time since ending his 12-year term as the program’s head coach in 2018. “But I thought for about 30 minutes, man, we were going blow for blow. I think with the physicality, we eventually wore down. Against Vanderbilt, I questioned our competitive stamina. I thought we sustained it long term tonight, we just had too many fundamental errors.”
It didn’t take long to see that UAB took strides from the miserable night in the exhibition game loss at Vanderbilt just over a week ago. The Blazers took a 45-44 lead over Ole Miss into halftime behind 17 first half points by Justyn Fernandez, who was just 1-of-9 from the field in the loss to Vanderbilt. Fernandez was 6-of-11 overall from the field and 3-of-5 on 3-point attempts in the first half.
It was Fernandez’s back-to-back 3-pointers and pullup jumper that took care of the scoring in a 9-0 run that gave the Blazers a 33-28 lead with 6:29 left in the first half. Ole Miss answered with a 7-0 run to take a lead that the Rebels helped for most of the final six minutes of the half. But UAB managed to take the advantage into halftime after Fernandez drove to the basket for a score with 17 seconds left before halftime.
A big part of the strong first half was that the Blazers controlled the boards, outrebounding Ole Miss 19-14, and turned the ball over just six times. Both of those things changed in the second half, even though UAB came out strong in the early going after halftime. Antallah Sandlin-El hit back-to-back 3-pointers early in the second half and Fernandez followed with another to give the Blazers a 54-50 lead. But they were unable to keep up that pace from the field.
“In the first half we shoot almost 50 percent from the floor,” Kennedy said. “In the second half, we made a couple at the end to shoot under 44 percent. As a result we weren’t able to change our D as much and they caught a rhythm. They shot 64 percent. That was hard to overcome.”
Overall, the Blazers were 13-of-24 from 3-point range with Fernandez hitting 5-of-8 and Sandlin-El making all four of his long range shots. But they still lost by 14 points after Ole Miss closed on a 16-8 run.
“I told our guys you shoot 54 percent from 3 and you lose,” said Kennedy, whose team was outscored 38-14 in the paint and 15-8 off turnovers. “That ain’t good. Our two-point shooting and the ability to play through contact (is not good). This team has a path. It may not be the path they want as it relates to easy but there’s a path and we’re learn from this.”
Fernandez finished with 25 points and was joined in double digits by Deuce Jones (12 points), Sandlin-El (12 points) and Elijah Duval (10 points). UAB finished with 19 assists and 14 turnovers with Jones turning it over seven times and Salim London dishing out a team-best five assists.
UAB heads back to the practice court to prepare for next Monday’s regular season opener against McNeese State in a game played in Rock Hill, S.C. The Blazers home opener is on Nov. 6 against Nicholls.