Preview: Ole Miss Women’s Basketball Closes Regular Season at Home Against Texas A&M

OXFORD, Miss.– The regular season finale has finally arrived, after a long and tumultuous few months—and Coach Yo’s Rebels will have one last chance to rediscover their footing before the SEC Tournament commences.

The nineteenth-ranked Ole Miss Rebels return home to the SJB Pavilion on Sunday to face Joni Taylor’s Texas A&M Aggies for their last regular-season hurrah, in a matchup that comes with major implications for both teams, albeit for very different reasons.

Ole Miss enters senior day at 21–9 overall and 8–7 in SEC play, having lost five of its last seven games—a stretch shaped in part by the infamous late-January winter storm that forced the Rebels into a punishing schedule crunch. The results have been sobering, but not devastating, as nearly every game during the unprecedented stretch has come against NCAA Tournament-projected teams. Still, the Rebs’ 85–48 loss at South Carolina (the largest margin of defeat for the program since the 2019–20 season) and a disappointing loss in Gainesville as a 5.5-point favorite (in a game in which they surrendered 59 percent from the floor while connecting on only 39 percent of their shots themselves) make clear that the team will need to use its final regular-season outing as a chance to get its early- and midseason mojo back just in time for the SEC Tournament.

The opportunity to respond comes against a Texas A&M team that Ole Miss holds clear statistical advantages over across nearly every major category. The Rebels average 75.9 points per game to A&M’s 66, while allowing 60.7 points per contest compared to the Aggies’ 68.7. Ole Miss shoots 43 percent from the floor to A&M’s 39, outrebounds the Aggies 40.5 to 37.8, and holds an edge in assists per game (14.2 to 13.4).

Texas A&M’s offensive profile is particularly opportunistic in this matchup for Coach Yo’s team. The Aggies’ 66 points per game rank second-fewest in the SEC, and they now face an Ole Miss defense allowing just 60.7 points per game, fifth-best in the conference. That number drops even further at home, where the Rebels are giving up a suffocating 54.6 points per game inside the SJB Pavilion. Simply put, there is plenty of reason to believe the Lady Rebels will have an encouraging defensive showing.

Still, this is not a game without danger.

Texas A&M has won four straight games, averaging 77 points per game during that stretch—a significant jump from its season-long average—and is clearly playing its best offensive basketball at the right time. Guard Ny’Ceara Prior, the Aggies’ leading scorer, will be tasked with jump-starting an offense that must keep pace with an Ole Miss team averaging 85.5 points per game at home.

Ball security will be critical for Texas A&M, which leads the SEC in turnovers committed at 17.3 per game—a troubling statistic against an Ole Miss defense built on pressure and disruption.

For Ole Miss, the focus begins (as it always has this season) with star forward Cotie McMahon. The senior has carried the Rebels for much of the season but was limited to a combined 17 points against South Carolina and Florida, below her season average of 19 points per game. A bounce-back performance will be critical if Ole Miss hopes to find its groove once again and get back to playing the kind of basketball we saw from both her and the team as a whole prior to the late-January winter storm.

When considering what’s on the line here, both teams will come out on Sunday craving another mark in the W to close out the regular season.

Ole Miss is fighting to keep its NCAA Tournament hosting hopes alive after the aforementioned recent setbacks. According to Charlie Creme, the Rebels currently project as a No. 5 seed, sitting just outside the hosting line reserved for the top four seeds. A strong finish could stabilize their résumé heading into the SEC Tournament, which will be of utmost importance for the Rebels if they want to get back into hosting conversation.

Texas A&M, meanwhile, is scraping for survival. After a disastrous 1–8 start in conference play, the Aggies have worked their way into the NCAA Tournament conversation and are currently listed among Creme’s next four out. A road win against a projected tournament team like Ole Miss would certainly lift their postseason hopes, as would a handful of wins in the SEC Tournament.

So while the standings may suggest a mismatch, the stakes say otherwise.

For Ole Miss, Sunday is about responding to adversity, reestablishing defensive identity, and ending the regular season with momentum. For Texas A&M, it’s a chance to put a bow on a late-season surge and just maybe earn their way into the NCAA Tournament. With postseason implications on both sides, the regular-season finale figures to see both teams playing with all the fire and motivation that they can muster — and one that both teams certainly won’t want to be on the losing end of.

Ole Miss takes on Texas A&M at the SJB Pavilion on Sunday, March 1, at 2:00 pm central on ESPN+.