Ole Miss basketball: Andy Kennedy loses race with destiny

Destiny’s last word

You could see Kennedy’s separation from Ole Miss basketball coming from miles into the Mississippi Hills. First, Ross Bjork became Ole Miss athletic director in 2012, three months after hiring Hugh Freeze as Ole Miss head football coach. While the two were not hired as a pair, the pair instituted a “just win” policy for Ole Miss football. The NCAA investigative panel said as much.

“The panel noted that the case was the result of a culture at the university where rules violations were acceptable in the football program and reminiscent of similar Ole Miss infractions cases in the past.”

While Freeze and Bjork led Ole Miss football to NCAA maximum security lock up, Andy Kennedy just did the best he could, and he didn’t fit in.

Then in January 2016, Jeffrey S. Vitter became the 17th chancellor of the University of Mississippi. Kennedy not only had a new boss signing the checks – and picking up the contribution checks from boosters, the new boss had worked at Duke, Texas A&M, and Kansas.

Duke and Kansas are two of the countries bluest of blue blood basketball power houses and Texas A&M is an all sport athletic powerhouse. The value of a successful Ole Miss basketball program was certainly not lost on Vitter.

Destinies hand left the message on the walls of the brand new Ole Miss basketball arena, The Pavilion at Ole Miss, when Kennedy did not receive a contract extension after the 2016 season.