Coach Yo's Take: Ole Miss WBB vs. Texas Longhorns Takeaways in SEC Tournament Matchup – Sports Illustrated

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Yolett McPhee-McCuin and the Ole Miss Rebels suffered a crushing 85-68 loss to the Texas Longhorns on Saturday evening in the semifinal round of the SEC Tournament.
The Rebels (23-11, 8-8 SEC) battled in the second half after trailing by double-digits through the first half, but the Longhorns (30-3, 13-3 SEC) rode strong, opening and closing surges that would seal their win.
Ole Miss leaves Greenville with a pair of strong victories, including a toppling of No. 5/5 Vanderbilt in the quarterfinal round yesterday, as the Rebels have now earned 34 wins all-time at the SEC Tournament.
Cotie McMahon and Denim DeShields excelled for the Rebels and kept Ole Miss in the fight throughout. The pair scored 20 points each, making 15 field goals between the two of them. For McMahon, it marked 19 games of at least 20 points this season.
That is tied with Bianca Thomas for the second most in a single season by any Rebel ever. Thomas achieved her feat in the 2009-10 season.
Following the matchup, Coach Yo took the podium to address the SEC Tournament run and what's next heading into March Madness.
Q. You came into this tournament on a four-game skid and missing some key pieces to your rotation. In spite of that, you took down the No. 2 seed in the tournament and played, you know, on paper, and the score and final score does not show it, a very good and close game against Texas. What is your message and take-away from this whole tournament heading into the NCAA Tournament?
YOLETT McPHEE-McCUIN: Great question. For me, I just have an incredible amount of gratitude. It's a long season. Like Denim alluded to, I wanted to make sure that our team felt like I was going to fight with them the whole time. When they remember anything about me, that's what I want them to remember. Coach fought with me through the highs, through the lows, all of the above.
This has just been such a challenging season for us. There's so many lessons that we learned through it all, that we have talked about as we've gone through it. I'm just grateful for the opportunity for us to experience those, because we are going to learn from them and use them as we try to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.
Q. Obviously you're very familiar with Madison's game. What makes that midrange jumper of hers so tough to defend?
YOLETT McPHEE-McCUIN: Well, she's 6'1", and she — I feel like every time Book plays us, it's personal, because she's from the state. Sometimes I don't want to even shake her head because I'm like, Why you went there? You could have did this with us.
When I think about our games with her, right, we played them at our place. We had them beat. She missed a shot, follows up, gets a rebound. Like, she always breaks it open every time we play them. I think it's a Mississippi thing. Super proud of her, though.
She's just a special talent. Wasn't she Player of the Year a couple of years? God's gift?
Q. She took over in the fourth quarter. Five of six, 13 points. What did you see happen? You guys got it to two, and it looked like you might have a shot. What did you see happen in the fourth quarter?
YOLETT McPHEE-McCUIN: They started to get some shots in the zone. With young people, when they get a little tired, they can't think. So we kind of lost her. They did a really good job of working the back line of the zone.
Really I don't prefer to play zone against them for long periods of time because eventually they will figure it out. I would have preferred to get back into man, but I didn't feel physically and mentally we were prepared to do so. As you saw, we went man, and she just blew by us like it didn't matter.
I thought she did a good job just getting comfortable. They do a good job of finding those spots for her, a short corner. Then once she sees it goes in, then she'll occasionally shoot a three. I think it makes her very difficult to guard.
Q. Coach, you talked about basically — I mean, obviously the goal is to win an NCAA Tournament Championship, but you also talked about making sure that Mississippi was amongst the mix among the top teams.
After losing this game, we know what the score is. What would you want people to recognize about this team? Obviously seeding will eventually come out. What do you want people to know about this team, specifically when you start talking about seeding purposes?
YOLETT McPHEE-McCUIN: Well, yeah, when I turned the TV on and I saw us with the other teams, and I remember they had all kind of polls. We weren't mentioned in any. As far as they're concerned, we weren't even supposed to be here, you know?
I was just filled with pride because my goal is to win a national championship. In order to do that, you got to go to the Elite Eight and Final Four, and I hadn't done that yet.
I think about when I'm in the Sweet 16, you know what that means? That means there are 16 teams remaining in the country out of 300 and some of. We have 16 teams in the conference, and we were one of four that played the last day before the — in the semifinals in the best league in the country arguably.
That's something to be said. So if we can do that after going on a four-game skid, after losing a player — we did this all with one of our starters being out, and she'll be back, okay? I probably could have played her today, but it wasn't worth it, right? She'll be back.
I think people, after seeing what we did to Auburn, seeing what we did to Vandy, seeing how we crawl back in this game — and like you all said, the game was closer than the end score. If people watched it, it was very competitive. It was a two-point game. We're going to be a tough out. We're going to be a tough out.
Coach Vic said that, and I told him — so y'all have to ask him when he has his presser, because I told him to make sure he said that in front of y'all, all the good things he said to me in the handshake line.
We're going to be competitive. We're going to defend, and we're going to represent the conference and our university at a high level. Anything outside of that, I can't control, you know? No use of me making this grand speech. The committee is going to do their best job, and then we'll deal with the cards that we're dealt.
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Follow Zack Nagy on Twitter: @znagy20 and Ole Miss Rebels On SI: @OleMissOnSI for all coverage surrounding the Ole Miss program.
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Zack Nagy is the Managing Editor and Publisher of Ole Miss Rebels On SI, a Sports Illustrated Publication. Nagy has covered Rebel Football, Baseball, Basketball and Recruiting, looking to keep readers updated on anything and everything involving Ole Miss athletics. Nagy has covered the Southeastern Conference for over half a decade after being born and raised in New Orleans (La.).
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