Big future for Ole Miss women’s hoops
OXFORD — Before you get to ESPN, you have to start in the gas stations and corner stores. At least according to Ole Miss women's basketball coach Yolett Mcphee-mccuin.
The Ole Miss women's basketball team lost in the WNIT finals Sunday night against Rice. One year and one pandemic removed from an 0-16 record in SEC play, Mcphee-mccuin and her team finished just short of a championship trophy and, realistically, one or two regular season wins away from an NCAA Tournament berth.
Mcphee-mccuin has preached all season that teams can't skip steps. Teams don't go from winless to winning it all overnight. That's why Mcphee-mccuin isn't lamenting a championship loss. She's championing the gains her team made in the community.
"Anytime they talk about you in the liquor store and the barbershop, you've made it, baby," she said Sunday. "They're talking about us."
This team didn't exactly come out of nowhere. Mcphee-mccuin signed the No. 1 recruiting class in the SEC for 2020. Two of those signees — Madison Scott and Snudda Collins — made it onto the SEC All-freshman team. Scott was named the SEC'S freshman of the year.
That's not mentioning first-team ALLSEC transfer Shakira Austin, who led the team in scoring and rebounding in her first year since coming to Oxford from Maryland. Nor is it mentioning Donnetta Johnson, the Georgia transfer who sat out in 2019-20 but became the Rebels' second-leading scorer in 2020-21.
Year 3 was always the year Mcpheemccuin had circled on the calendar as the time the program would start trending upward. At her previous job, Mcpheemccuin brought Jacksonville to its first and only NCAA Tournament appearance in Year 3.
Turnarounds don't happen overnight, especially not in the SEC. That's what makes the Rebels' success this March all the more encouraging.
Seven teams that played in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 this season were in the WNIT at least once since 2016. Three won the tournament outright, another advanced to the semifinals and another to the quarters.
Encouragingly for Ole Miss, six of those seven teams came from Power 5 conferences like the Rebels.
Austin, Johnson and the Rebels' stellar freshman class are all expected back for next season. So is 6-foot-2 center and Cincinnati transfer Andeija Puckett, a former top-100 recruit who missed this season with an injury.