The Tribune

By TENAJH SWEETING

Tribune Sports Reporter

tsweeting@tribunemedia.net

The no. 2 UConn women’s basketball team spoiled the homecoming for Grand Bahamian coach Yolett “Coach Yo” McPhee-McCuin and the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) Rebels, winning the Baha Mar Women’s Championship 73-60 last night at the Baha Mar Convention Centre.

While the Connecticut Huskies hoisted the championship trophy and improved to 6-0 on the season, Ole Miss fell to a 4-2 win/loss record.  

The no.18 Ole Miss had a tough start to the ball game on offence while the Huskies were firing on all cylinders in the first half. 

UConn charged ahead with a 12-3 run early in the contest before closing out the first period 19-8. Ole Miss struggled to put the ball in the basket during this stretch, shooting just 2-for-14 from the field going into the second period.

Huskies standout performer Paige Bueckers carried the team all game long. She poured in a game-high 29 points, pulled in four boards and also dished out four dimes. She was efficient and shot 11-for-17 from the field in 38 minutes played. Beukers torched the usually stingy Ole Miss defence for 14 points in the first half. UConn turned up the intensity in the second quarter and Beukers made a jumper to give her team a 20-point cushion (35-15) at the 1:02 mark of the second quarter.

Ole Miss trailed 37-18 at the halftime mark.

“Coach Yo” was visibly frustrated at last night’s press conference while expressing her thoughts on what went wrong for last year’s Battle 4 Atlantis women’s champions.

“We played this kind of schedule to be exposed. UConn exposed us once again that when we play these games we can’t just want to win, both teams want to win. We have to do what it takes and what it would’ve taken was to not let people just walk to the basket and make a layup…We can’t give elite teams easy baskets so we did not do a good job of following the game plan. 

“What I learned is that we have to continue to coach and hold them to the standard,” she said.

Ole Miss showed signs of life after the halftime break to chip at the Huskies deficit bit by bit.

After trailing by double digits at the break, the Lady Rebels erased the UConn lead down to just 3 (41-38) at the 5:39 mark of the third quarter.

However, Azzi Fudd derailed the offensive flurry with a timely three to hold off Ole Miss. The latter managed to outscore the newly crowned champions 28-15 in this period but were still behind 52-46 after three quarters of play.

Coach Yo shared what the message was to get the team fired up at the intermission.

“The message was we’re a defensive team and we are not guarding. UConn made fifteen layups on us and that is the stuff that just pisses me off. They just walked to the basket. That is just not who we are and we allowed them to just do it…We should’ve won the game.

“It’s the identity crisis and so we have to learn,” she said.

Following the big third quarter surge, the Lady Rebels ran out of gas. 

Despite cutting the UConn lead down to just three points in the third, the Rebels found themselves falling behind once again by double digits (59-49) at the 8:22 mark of the fourth and they never recovered.

McPhee-McCuin said the team will take the tournament play as a learning experience for the rest of the season.

“It is phenomenal and it couldn’t be any better. We do not need to be walking around with fake celebrations . We need to be exposed. I know my team is good. I don’t think my team is no. 18 I think my team is top ten in the country. We have shown it twice but until we figure out how to do the things that are gonna make us special we will continue to lose because the margin of error is small because UConn and Southern California are top ten teams in the country too. We gotta figure out how to make that margin of error smaller and that is why we are playing these games. In the grand scheme of things we are right where we need to be. 

“We are not peaking. We are not there yet and we will get this film and we will continue to build and learn from it,” the coach said.

UConn had the hot hand all night, shooting 58.5 per cent while holding Ole Miss to just 32.4 per cent shooting from the field.

They also dominated the paint 48-18.

KK Deans led the Lady Rebels in scoring with 17 points and two steals in the tough loss.

Next up for Ole Miss will be the Alabama State on Saturday at 3pm.