Ole Miss stumbled into the postseason with four consecutive losses, but the team got it together when it mattered the most. The Rebels upset No. 5 Vanderbilt 89-78 in the quarterfinals of the SEC tournament, earning them a ticket to their fourth semifinal appearance in the last five years.
This result also means Ole Miss has gone 2-0 against Vanderbilt this season, with the first win happening when the Rebels were displaced due to a winter storm. That victory, however, was dismissed by many ahead of the game. Vanderbilt entered Friday’s matchup ranked No. 5 in the nation and also a serious contender for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and was widely considered a favorite to make it to the semifinals. (Though our CBS Sports bold predictions had Ole Miss winning this game.)
An animated Coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin was asked if her team took it personally.
“Absolute-damn-lutely,” she replied on the ESPN broadcast.
Ole Miss star Cotie McMahon felt the same way.
“We got called out on media that we weren’t dictating and disrupting. We weren’t doing the Ole Miss way,” she said. “We just felt like in tournament time, this is we win or go home.”
McMahon finished the game with 27 points and seven assists. It wasn’t her best shooting night but she got the job done on the free-throw line, going 15 of 17. The star of the show was senior forward Latasha Lattimore, who scored 28 points off the bench, more than doubling her season average of 10.4 points per game.
McPhee-McCuin has talked about the importance of her team having a strong defensive mentality, whether shots are falling or not. The Rebels took that to heart and held Vanderbilt to just 5 of 29 in the first two quarters in a full team effort. The 49-17 score was not only a season low for the Commodores, it was also the largest halftime deficit in an SEC Tournament game since 1998.
Ole Miss also took care of business on the offensive side of the court, shooting a combined 57.6% from the field in the first half with Lattimore going a perfect 7 of 7 and Tianna Thompson going 6 of 7. Coach Yo had no notes for her team at halftime and opted to let her players take the lead in their discussion.
Vanderbilt had a large mountain to climb, but started the second half strong by forcing multiple turnovers and going on a small run in the first few minutes. However, Ole Miss did not give up the momentum and wrapped up the quarter on a 19-4 run.
Vanderbilt star Mikayla Blakes started the game going 0 of 12 and didn’t score her first field goal until there were less than two and a half minutes remaining in the third quarter. She also found herself in foul trouble. Her fourth came early in the fourth quarter and coach Shea Ralph was ejected for complaining to the officials. That was her first ejection as the Vanderbilt head coach.
The Commodores were fired up and had a 15-0 run in the middle of the fourth quarter. Denim Deshields stopped the bleeding for Ole Miss with a 3-pointer.
The last five minutes were extremely competitive while Vanderbilt made a serious comeback attempt. However, the team’s leading rebounder Sacha Washington fouled out with under four minutes remaining in the game. She had 16 points and 8 rebounds at the time.
Blakes did heat up and scored 23 of her 24 total points in the second half, but the Commodores had dug themselves too deep a hole.
Ole Miss will face the winner of Texas vs. Alabama on Saturday. The Rebels only lost to Texas by three points and to Alabama by one point this season, with both games being on the road.
“We’ve got to figure out how to have the courage to believe in ourselves to put a team away,” McPhee-McCuin said in the broadcast. “And I told them before the game, ‘Don’t be shocked if we’re up by a lot.’ Like, we already did this before, and it’s not a fluke. We’re legit, guys. All right?’ But sometimes my team’s still in shock, and that’s the humility. But right now, I think in this point in the season, we’ve got to forget the humility. We can be humble, but we gotta be confident. We have to have a bravado and a swagger about ourselves like we belong.”
Vanderbilt was already slightly behind Texas in the race for the last projected No. 1 seed for the NCAA Tournament. A loss in the quarterfinals gave the Longhorns the edge. Vic Schaefer’s team will pretty much lock it in by advancing to Saturday’s SEC Tournament semifinals.
