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OXFORD, Miss. -- Mississippi coach Andy Kennedy leaned into the microphone at his postgame press conference, flashed a smile and whispered softly.Coaches arent supposed to say this out loud, especially on a game this early in the season, but this was a must win for us, said Kennedy, after his Rebels defeated Memphis 85-77 on Saturday.Sebastian Saiz proved to be the decisive factor, scoring 20 points and grabbing 16 rebounds. The Rebels made good use of the free-throw line, finishing 28 of 33 (85 percent), including 17 consecutive conversions in the final eight minutes.Deandre Burnett scored 19 points and Cullen Neal added 12 for the Rebels (6-2), who used a 20-3 run in the second half to wipe out a 66-61 deficit.We played hard and I was proud of the effort, Memphis coach Tubby Smith said. We had that one stretch where we just blew up. It began when we fouled a 3-point shooter and you cant do that. Weve got to play smarter, but Ole Miss made plays when they had to. Credit them.Memphis (6-2) was led by K. J. Lawson with 17 points, while Markel Crawford and Jeremiah Martin had 16 and 14 points, respectively. The Tigers used a 24-5 surge early in the second half to build a 62-57 lead with 9:50 left, but could not match Ole Miss in the final eight minutes.Ole Miss was 25 of 58 (43 percent) from the field, while Memphis finished 26 of 61 (43 percent). The Tigers were 19 of 29 (66 percent) from the line and outrebounded Ole Miss 38-37, led by Dedric Lawson and Crawford with six apiece.ROLE PLAYERKennedy has a habit of tinkering with starting lineups in nonconference games and inserted Neal after the opening six minutes. The transfer guard responded strongly with 12 points, three assists and a steal. His 3-point shot capped the decisive 20-3 burst, giving the Rebels an insurmountable 81-69 lead with 3:01 remaining.TURNING POINTMemphis finished with four starters at four fouls apiece and got only 13 points from the bench. The foul trouble and depth issues were especially obvious as Memphis was burned by the late 20-3 run. Ole Miss had only four turnovers in the second half and only one during the game-winning surge.QUOTABLEIn the postgame press conference, explaining the adjustments made by Memphis during a 24-5 Tigers run, Kennedy said, Tubby Smith is a first-ballot Hall of Famer.BIG PICTUREMemphis: Leading scorer and rebounder Dedric Lawson was limited to eight points and six rebounds in 19 minutes. The Tigers still managed to build a five-point lead heading into the final eight minutes despite extended foul trouble.Ole Miss: After a blowout home loss to Middle Tennessee State and trailing late in the second half to Memphis, the Rebels showed mental toughness and play-making ability with the late rally. Saiz consistently provided big plays in the second half on both ends of the floor.UP NEXTMemphis: Gets a week off before hosting Monmouth on SaturdayOle Miss: Visits Virginia Tech on Dec. 11 before closing December with a four-game home stand. Custom Evan Longoria Jersey . The Masters champion and winner of last weeks Australian PGA has a three-round total of 14-under 199 at Royal Melbourne. "Im in a really good position for tomorrow," Scott said. Custom Rays Jersey China . Manuel was offered a position the day he was fired. He accepted earlier this week and the team made the announcement Friday. http://www.customraysjersey.com/ . Scott won the Australian PGA last week in his first event in Australia since winning the U.S. Masters in April. American Matt Kuchar, ahead by two strokes with four to play and even with Scott with one to go, double-bogeyed the 18th after taking two shots to get out of a bunker. Custom Rays T-shirts . Durant finished with 24 points and 13 rebounds, Jackson matched his career high with 23 points on 10-of-14 shooting and Lamb scored 12 points on 5-of-7 shooting, lifting the Thunder to a 94-88 win over San Antonio and snapping the Spurs 11-game winning streak. Custom Rays Jerseys . -- Bobby Ryan helped the U. There was little to suggest, through the week, at the Karnataka State Billiards Association (KSBA) in central Bengaluru that a World Championship was underway. Despite some of the games best players in the house, the playing hall was largely empty and quiet; except for the final, which was packed, there were fewer than a dozen spectators - and half of those were invariably players families.The answer possibly lies with the sport in question - Billiards.At a time when sport is being tweaked to fit capsule-sized formats, and keeping in mind decreasing audience attention spans, billiards sticks to tradition: Players dressed in waistcoat and bowtie, matches sometimes lasting seven hours long. Billiards evolved from a lawn game similar to croquet played in the 15th century, and doesnt seem to have changed much since then.Its younger cousin, snooker, ticks the right boxes. Its faster, uses more balls (15 as opposed to the three of billiards) and generally enjoys a wider profile across the globe. In Myanmar, for example, snooker is the growing sport; billiards languishes in obscurity. Youngsters in Myanmar take to snooker a lot more than they do to billiards, Myanmars highest-ranked billiards player Aung Htay told ESPN at the World Championships. Billiards is viewed as old fashioned.It seems almost everyone in the game agrees with that, but nothing has been done about it. The rules of the sport have to be tweaked, says reigning national billiards champion and this years World Championship silver medallist Sourav Kothari. Billiards is getting monotonous, especially the long format. You have to jazz it up, bring more noise into the sport. The absence of a marketable star with a magnetic personality - someone who would venture beyond the staid and predictable, and maybe even engage in the occasional trash talk to fan viewer interest - has also hurt the sport. Pankaj Advani, one of its bigger stars, is reticent, non-controversial and anything but pompous of his achievements. Rivalries in sport work like a charm. Theres very little of it in cue sport. The ones that exist arent storied or publicized enough. We need a couple of good rivalries to latch on to peoples imagination, feels Geet Sethi.A primary concern for the sport is its lack of television coverage. A crushing blow in frenzied times such as these. The reason again lies in the sport itself: not being spectator-friendly enough. Talking to ESPN, Peter Gilchrist admits despite decent attempts at making the game shorter, little has changed. Weve tried everything: 50-up, 100-up, 150-up, points format, time format but unfortunately theres still no people. We probably need a bunch of girls in bikinis, he says, over a laugh, At least it worked for beach volleyball.While shorter formats, like the 100-up, which essentially means a player would have to first score over 100 points to win a frame in a usually best of five frame format which can last anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour are more popular among a wider base, it hasnt really translated into tangible numbers for the sport.Geet Sethi, easily Indias most celebrated name in billiards, argues that the relevance of the sport in the 21st century isnt a fair question, choosing instead to focus on the factors which contribute to its peripheral status. To make billiards spectator friendly is a tough call, he says, Given that weve tried the shorter formats as well. Take a sport like shooting or archery for instance. Theyre really boring to watch and anything but spectator-friendly, but being a part of the Olympics has changed the dynamics. We need to be back in the Asian Games at least, to start with.Cue sports were part of the Asian Games from the 1998 Bangkok edition, but were dropped at the 2014 Games in Guangzhou due to financial constraints. It does not feature in the Commonwealth Games either. That makes the Olympics a pretty long shot. Getting into the Asian Games would be a huge boost and would lead to a revival. The future of billiards, I feel, lies in making a comeback at the Asian Games, which would be fantastic. Or else we would be plodding along like we currentlyy are, adds Gilchrist, agreeing with Sethi.ddddddddddddOne way, Kothari suggests, of making the game more interesting is by adding a circle somewhere on the table, either by way of a thin round film or a laser beam. We could say that if theres any ball in that circle and you score points from there you get 30 extra points, he says, The circle could be put in a very difficult spot in the table, where the ball cannot go too often, maybe inside the D and we could have a blue ball as one of the strikers instead of having a spotted white and spotted yellow one. If the ball stops inside a particular circle, you lose a point that you scored or if it stops inside a particular zone you lose your visit and a certain number of points. We need to change the way viewers see the game. We need to make it more colorful. Maybe the white can be done away with totally and we could have a green or blue striker instead.Ascribing billiards sagging interest to a sea change in the sponsorship scenario, Gilchrist says that through the 1990s when ITC sponsored billiards events, there was money in the sport. Since tobacco sponsorship ended, billiards too is more or less gone, he adds. ITC was known to have spent close to Rs 250 crore annually in sponsoring cricket, golf, billiards, tennis and horse racing events before pulling out in 2001 following the central governments decision to ban advertising and promotion of tobacco products. It did, however, return following a three-year hiatus to hold the 2005 Sunfeast Open tennis tournament in Kolkata. Billiards needs an influx of cash to pick up. Its not really a spectator sport. Its more of a strategic game and the best players make it look far too easy, says Gilchrist, who won his first world title in 1994.While a snooker and pool league is in the works for a possible March 2017 launch in India, billiards isnt part of the plan. Hosting the ongoing World Championship cost the Billiards and Snooker Federation of India (BSFI) close to Rs 70 lakhs, out of which the primary sponsor, Karnataka Tourism, paid Rs 15 lakhs. The lacunae lies within the federation itself, says BSFI secretary G Balasubramaniam, We are unable to promote the event (World Billiards Championship) because of our limitations. Private sponsorship is little. What is worrying is that even for a big-ticket snooker event like the Indian Open, which is beamed live and well-promoted it is very difficult to find willing sponsors.Earlier this month, the sports ministry in association with the BSFI inaugurated a billiards academy at the Talkatora stadium in New Delhi and the idea, Balasubramaniam adds, is to replicate the effort in five centres across the country. It is divided into two sections: one for beginners and the other for players, he says, Its been less than a fortnight so far and the numbers are on the rise in the beginners section. Also our application for promotion of billiards in schools and colleges is pending.An oft-talked about disincentive of the sport is its need for infrastructure to be played: Table, balls, cue, unlike say football or cricket. The accessibility to such facilities being limited to high-end social clubs or pool parlours makes it instantly unappealing to a large section of people. The jury has also been long out on the need for the sport to shed its bowtie-waistcoat dress code and become more casual, funky, colorful and most importantly, relatable. Kothari, though feels the sport is synonymous with its look. I like the waistcoat, maybe not the bowtie. It adds to the grace of the game. Gilchrist had a more ingenious idea to offer. We should probably turn up in trunks, he says, cracking up.While billiards future, some might suggest, hinges on its ability to reinvent and package itself better, Sethi has a word of faith. There will be periods when well have brilliant players, good rivalry and it will become popular. Then well go through a lull phase. It could be alternating decades possibly, he says.Billiards is a great survivor. ' ' '