Thursday’s game between Ole Miss and Arkansas will be the Lady Rebel’s first real home game since Jan. 11. The journey to get here was a long one — literally and figuratively.
On Jan. 24, winter storm Fern hit Mississippi, leaving 62,000 people in Oxford without power and shutting down the University of Mississippi campus. At the time, the Ole Miss women’s basketball team was 17-4 and ranked No. 18 in the country. After back-to-back road games against Georgia and Missouri, the Rebels were looking forward to a three-game homestand. But Fern had other ideas.
First, Ole Miss’s home game against Tennessee, which was originally scheduled for Monday, Jan. 26, was postponed to Feb. 17. It soon became clear that Ole Miss would be in no shape to host its marquee matchup against No. 5 Vanderbilt on Jan. 29. So that game postponed a day and moved almost three hours down I-22 to Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama.
Lin Marijnissen
The Lady Rebels could have been down about losing a key home game, but instead they put their heads down and worked hard to pull off an 83-75 victory against a top-five team. It meant a lot, but not just because it was against one of the top teams in the country. Over 300,000 people lost power in Mississippi and the effects were still being felt weeks later.
“For us, any SEC win is a big win. I’m just going to be completely honest, because they are so hard to come by,” coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin told CBS Sports. “Was it special? It was because I felt like Oxford just needed some type of positivity at the time so that’s what made it mean a little more.
“We knew people were struggling, we knew what people were without and we wanted to do our part by trying to get a win for the group. That made it special because of the response we got after winning that game.”
This wasn’t just a one-game blip for the Rebels, either. The Oxford campus wouldn’t officially reopen until Feb. 9, so the team’s Feb. 2 home game against Auburn had to be moved to Birmingham, too. Ole Miss won that game, 71-45. That happened to be Ole Miss’s 19th win this season, which put them at a 19-4 record and gave the program its best start in the McPhee-McCuin era.
“That’s my best start in my eight years I’ve been here,” McPhee-McCuin said. “And we are doing it displaced.”
Coach Yo knew it was tough to stay on the road for so long, so she asked her players if they wanted to go home before traveling again for their game against Alabama. She was impressed when they voted to stay on the road to avoid distractions. McPhee-McCuin said her admiration for her players grew even more because of the resilience they were showing. But her heart also felt full by seeing all the love they received from the people at Birmingham.
“The city of Birmingham, they were so awesome to us.” she said. “…We made it our home. I was going to pilates class, getting my nails done, the whole nine. They just really wrapped their arms around us. People from the hotel came to the (Auburn) game. It really because our home away from home.”
The Rebels finally left Birmingham after the Auburn game to travel to Tuscaloosa to face Alabama on Feb. 5.
McPhee-McCuin said multiple SEC coaches reached out to check in on her and her team during the displacement, including South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, Tennessee’s Kim Caldwell and Alabama’s Kristy Curry.
It meant a lot to hear from her colleagues, but the competition is still very much on. Ole Miss almost picked up another strong win on the road, but they were edged out by Alabama in a competitive 64-63 loss.
“I’ll tell you this, this league is unforgiving,” Coach Yo said laughing. “They’ll reach out but they’ll still want to pound you by 50 if they can.”
Hayden Carroll
After almost two weeks of power outages, postponements, arena changes and impromptu road trips, Ole Miss finally returned to Oxford this week. They’re now 19-5 and ranked No. 14, meaning they actually gained ground despite all of the curveballs.
The SEC is a brutal conference, but the competition keeps motivating Ole Miss to reach new heights. CBS Sports bracketologist Connor Groel is currently projecting the Rebels as a No. 5 seed. The team has made it to the Sweet 16 twice in the McPhee-McCuin era, including last season, but the program has not been to the Elite Eight since 2007. McPhee-McCuin wants to achieve this and more with her current roster.
“We want to do a lot of special things, for Oxford and Ole Miss,” she said. “We want to try to host if we can and we want to win SEC championships. Ultimately, we want to go to Phoenix and be Final Four participants. That’s what we are working on.”
Up next, the Rebels will host Arkansas on Thursday, Feb. 12, which will be available on the SEC Network at 9 p.m. ET.
