Coach Yo Looks Ahead to No. 19 Ole Miss’ Matchup Against No. 22 Louisville
OXFORD, Miss. – The No. 19 Ole Miss women’s basketball team hosts the No. 22 Louisville Cardinals on Wednesday night in the SEC/ACC Challenge.
You’re cordially invited to a 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒚 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒊𝒑 🎉
There will be a pregame happy hour and a t-shirt giveaway for students. You don’t want to miss this!
🎟️ – https://t.co/Ok8ba5kPXI pic.twitter.com/O1PkjDxqao
— Ole Miss Women’s BB (@OleMissWBB) November 27, 2023
Ole Miss (5-1, 0-0 SEC) head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin met with the media on Tuesday to talk about the upcoming matchup.
“Excited about the game (Wednesday), SEC/ACC Challenge,” McPhee-McCuin said. “This was not something that we were able to set up on our own. If that were the case, I don’t know if we would want to play them Louisville right now. We don’t have control of that, so we move forward and are excited to play another top 25 program.”
Coach Yo added that the Rebels look to continue to build as a unit.
McPhee-McCuin and her staff have learned a lot about the team as of late having played games against Arizona and Michigan in the Bahamas, en route to the Battle 4 Atlantis championship.
“I think it was freeing for me to use non-conference to learn about my team,” McPhee-McCuin said.
“I’m not going to allow the outside to say this is what my team should be. Let me just figure this thing out as we go and that has really helped us.”
Coach Yo
McPhee-McCuin added that they coach games to win, and their players play to win.
“The tournament in the Bahamas and the game before with Temple and after with Little Rock,” she said. “They have been great opportunities to see my team play against different styles, different sizes, different philosophies and figure out a way how to dictate and disrupt — then score points more than them. That’s the name of the game.“
Coach Yo
Coach Yo continues to emphasize the importance of defense to her team’s success.
“Luckily for us is we are going to hang our hat on the defensive end, and I think we have a chance to be in every game as long as we don’t give up 80 points like we did to Oklahoma,” McPhee-McCuin said.
“We just have to sit down, and guard and our team is starting to really like that and buy into that role.”
Coach Yo on team defense
The Rebels have taken the court for one complete game now without their starting point guard KK Deans who went down early against Michigan in the Bahamas title game. Deans, a transfer from Florida, suffered a season-ending injury.
“When she got hurt in the Michigan game, we had to pivot with three more quarters left, right then and there,” McPhee-McCuin said. “To come out knowing the score said 11 but we were up 20 for most of the game until they hit a couple of threes at the end. I thought our team did a good job,” McPhee-McCuin added.
“Then we had Little Rock. After Little Rock was the first time that we were able to sit and say, ‘ok, this is what is going on. KK is not coming back and here’s how we move forward.’ We hadn’t been able to do that. When we got back it was Thanksgiving, then we had to prepare for Little Rock. This was our first true time to reset and say, ‘moving forward, this is what is going to look like.”
Coach Yo on playing without KK Deans
Coach Yo talked about the matchup against the Cardinals.
“(Louisville) kind of looks like us. A lot of new pieces are athletic and aggressive. They like to get after it defensively, as well. They like to have fun offensively, and I think it’s going to come down to which team wants to impact their will the most in their own way. I look at our statistical numbers and we’re almost identical in every category.”
Coach Yo on Louisville
Coach Yo added fans who attend will be in for a great game. “Louisville is more like us and it should be a knock down drag out. Coach (Jeff) Walz has won a lot of games and his program has been successful. I think last year they had been to the Elite-Eight like, I don’t know, six times or whatever — and for me, I am trying to build our program in that light.”
Ole Miss and Louisville will tip off on Wednesday at 8:15 p.m. and the game can be seen on ESPNU.
Adam Brown
Adam Brown joins The Rebel Walk as the Managing Editor after being on the Ole Miss beat as a Sports Editor for over 11 years. He is a lifelong Oxford resident. Brown graduated from the University of Mississippi with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
Prior to The Rebel Walk, Brown was the sports editor of HottyToddy.com covering every Ole Miss sport and local high school sports in the community.
