Three seconds remained in Ole Miss’ SEC overtime battle at Georgia on Jan. 14. The score was tied at 95 when the Rebels’ 6-foot-5 senior guard AJ Storr drove to the SEC logo and put up a jump shot that bounced off the front rim. Double overtime seemed likely. But Patton Pinkins, a 6-foot-5 freshman guard, had other ideas. Sprinting from behind the three-point arc, Pinkins slapped the rebound off the backboard and the ball fell into his hands. In the blink of an eye, Pinkins threw it back toward the basket and it went in as time expired.
Game officials checked the monitor to see if Pinkins squeezed off the shot in time, but there was no question — the Rebels had pulled out a 97-95 victory. After the deed was done, Pinkins avoided being mobbed by his teammates by racing around the Stegeman Coliseum floor in a jubilant victory lap, finally stopping at his team’s bench, where chaos ensued.
Plays like this are how legends are made, and sometimes, how entire seasons are saved. If one game-winning basket could etch Pinkins’ name into Ole Miss basketball lore — or even help turn around a season that, before SEC play, hadn’t started out how the Rebels had hoped — what could another do?
The answer to that question won’t come for a few more rough-and-tumble weeks, but Pinkins has provided some food for thought. Three days after Pinkins’ heroics at Georgia, in another hard-fought league road game at Mississippi State, he calmly dropped in a floater in the closing seconds to provide the winning points. This time, Pinkins, who hadn’t made a shot all day (0 of 6 from the field 0 or 5 from three), was in the right corner, beyond the three-point line. After receiving a pass from Corey Chest, who had driven into the paint, Pinkins could have launched a three-pointer, but instead he shot-faked the Bulldogs’ Ja’Borri McGhee, who was closing out on him but went sailing past, dribbled to the right lane line and tossed in a high-arching floater with 16 seconds to play. Ball game.
The Ole Miss sports information department is going to have to come up with a nickname for this guy.
This season is far from over, but what Pinkins has done in his first year of college basketball is a culmination of the work he’s put in from a young age. His father is Al Pinkins, who is on Chris Beard’s staff at Ole Miss and had worked with Beard before at Texas Tech. When Beard says the younger Pinkins was “born to play basketball,” he’s not exaggerating.
“But I didn’t force him into the game,” says Al Pinkins, who in his long career has also made stops at Florida, LSU, Tennessee and Middle Tennessee State. “I bought him a Little Tikes goal at the age of four and just gave him the ball. Then he became a basketball kid at a young age. He had a cheat sheet to go by, because he would always come to practices and camps, go inside locker rooms, and he was around some of the great players I’ve coached and the successful coaches I’ve worked for.”
Osmosis might have played a big role in Patton Pinkins’ development, but so did his father. They’ve worked out together ever since Patton committed himself to the game. Al took a different approach to teaching his son. “We worked on dribbling, passing and shooting,” Al Pinkins says. “Our workouts had a heavy dose of all three. But when he was a youngster, after his team got up by 10 or 12 points, I told him to start playing like a point guard and get his teammates the ball. It’s harder the other way, when a kid is taught to score, score, score, and then you pull him back to try and make plays for others. We went the opposite way.”
Patton Pinkins learned his lessons well and eventually became a top-100 prospect. He was heavily recruited out of Frenship High School in Texas, and his final list of schools included Oklahoma and Wake Forest. But his choice was Ole Miss, because he didn’t want to be separated from his lifelong mentor.
“When I was growing up, my dad couldn’t coach me in games,” Patton Pinkins says. “But he was like my trainer. Every time I worked out, it was with him. Now, it’s even more special.”
Patton’s statistics are befitting a coach’s son. He has become more confident and comfortable as the season has progressed, and after he blitzed Oklahoma with a career-high 25 points on 9 of 11 shooting (4 of 6 from three) in the Rebels’ SEC season opener on Jan. 3, he earned a spot in the starting lineup. He’s shooting 49.5 percent from the field, 44.0 percent from three and 81.3 percent from the free-throw line. Just as impressive, he’s turned the ball over only two times in 361 minutes spread across 18 games.
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Pinkins had never made a game-winning shot at any level. The pair he’s made in the Rebels’ last two games are a direct result of his training. He knew instinctively that game winners often come after offensive rebounds. So when Storr’s shot against Georgia went up, Pinkins crashed the glass.
“I went in there to try and get my hand on the ball,” Pinkins says. “I did, and when I got it back, I just threw up a prayer, and the Lord answered that prayer.”
In the Mississippi State game, Pinkins relied on an old and reliable weapon.
“His floater is his signature move,” Al Pinkins says. “We’ve worked on that ad nauseum. As you go up levels, layups are harder and harder to come by. You’ve got to have a weapon where you can score over length. Threes and shot fakes to floaters are probably his two best moves.”
After the Oklahoma game, opposing teams have been trying to run Pinkins off the three-point line. Beard and his staff want Pinkins to get more aggressive playing off ball screens and getting more shots from behind the arc. He’ll get there eventually, but he’s still a tough cover, thanks to all those hours spent with his father. “I’ve been ready for that moment,” Pinkins says of the floater he used to beat Mississippi State. “That game I couldn’t make a jump shot, so I used the shot fake to get to one of my game shots. I floated it up there with confidence, and when it went in, it was huge.”
After an 8-5 record in nonconference games and an 0-2 start in the SEC, the Rebels have won their last three games.
“We’ve had some grit here in the SEC,” Pinkins says. “We’ve ground out a couple of close games to steal two on the road. Now we’re coming home with confidence. We’re starting to build momentum.”
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