The Tribune

By RENALDO DORSETT

Tribune Sports Reporter

rdorsett@tribunemedia.net

YOLETT McPhee-McCuin’s Ole Miss Rebels will conclude a busy regular season schedule with three games over the course of the next seven days.

The final week includes home matchups against Arkansas and a rematch with No. 1 South Carolina.

The Rebels won their second consecutive game with a 74-54 win over the Vanderbilt Commodores on Sunday at Memorial Gymnasium in Nashville, Tennessee.

Ole Miss improved to 20-6, 8-5 in the Southeastern Conference. With the win, the Rebels won on the road in Nashville for the first time since 1987 and earned their first 20-win season since 2007.

McPhee-McCuin earned the 50th win of her Ole Miss tenure on February 17 when she completed a season sweep over the Texas A and M Aggies with a 74-54 win.

“This is why I came here. And I told my team just a couple of days ago, I said, ‘I want to win a national championship at Ole Miss.’ But we can’t skip steps,” McPhee-McCuin said.

“Fifty wins. Wow. It’s been a long journey. It’s been tough. There have been trying times where I felt like maybe I wasn’t the one for the job. There have been highs and there’ve been lows. And I’m just thankful for people like Maddie [Madison Scott], [Lashonda] Monk, Kira (Shakira Austin) … all my coaches for believing in my vision.”

The win over the Aggies ended a losing streak which included losses to No.15 LSU and Mississippi State. “No doubt. Absolutely (we needed that game to get back on track). The last few games haven’t felt good. It didn’t feel like our kind of team, and we wanted to get back to that,” McPhee- McCuin said.

“I think one (team) that doesn’t know who they are, they’re like a leaf in the wind. And a leaf in the wind, you can end up on a sandy beach, or you can end up on the lip of a volcano. So, you have to know who you are. And we’re a defensive team.”

McPhee-McCuin joined the Rebels in 2018 with expectations to rebuild a programme that struggled in recent years and was in the cellar of the SEC.

In her first year at the helm the team finished 9-22, 3-13 in conference play and the season concluded with a first round loss in the SEC Tournament.

In year two, The Rebels finished the season at 7-23 and suffered another opening round loss in the tournament. Last year, the Rebels finished the season 15-12, for their first winning season since 2016-17. After an 11-11 regular season, 4-10 in the SEC, they advanced to the first SEC Quarterfinal since 2004. Their résumé included three wins against ranked teams and four Top-50 NET wins. They eventually fell to Rice in the WNIT title game. Ole Miss recently signed McPhee-McCuin to a new four-year contract extension that runs through 2025.