Last week Ole Miss handed Georgia its first loss of the season to start conference play and it nearly handed a first loss to a national title contender.
The Rebels mounted a late comeback Sunday against No. 2 Texas, but fell just short of a team Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin sees one of the best in the nation.
“I believe Texas is a Final Four team,” she said after Sunday’s game. “I think they’re one of the best teams in the country.”
The Longhorns maintained their spot as one of the best teams in the latest AP Top 25 Women’s College Basketball Poll while the Rebels fell backwards.
Ole Miss dropped three spots in Monday’s updated poll to No. 18. The Rebels also fell two spots in the NCAA Women’s College Basketball NET Rankings.
Here’s the Rebels’ NET rankings breakdown:
- NET: 24 (previous 22)
- Overall: 14-3
- Road: 2-1
- Neutral: 3-2
- Home: 9-0
- Q1: 0-2
- Q2: 2-1
- Q3: 2-0
- Q4: 10-0
Sunday’s game may not have had the end result Ole Miss wanted, but there’s plenty to learn from it for the Rebels.
“There’s so much that we’re gonna unpack from this game and we’re gonna try to incorporate some things that worked really well for us,” McPhee-McCuin said. “We’re gonna try to stop doing some of the things that hurt us and then we got to try to go 1-0 next game.
“The thing about the SEC that is challenging is there’s so many different styles. Back in the day everybody was kind of like us, Texas and South Carolina. But now you got all these teams that just they’re different. You got Oklahoma that’s different. You got just a bunch of different looks. So, we we learned from this, we built some stuff and then we really got to flush it and try to go 1-0 next game.”
AP Top 25 Women’s College Basketball Poll
- UConn 15-0
- Texas 17-0
- South Carolina 15-1
- UCLA 14-1
- Oklahoma 14-1
- Kentucky 15-1
- Vanderbilt 15-0
- Maryland 15-1
- Michigan 11-2
- Louisville 14-3
- Iowa State 14-1
- LSU 14-2
- TCU 14-1
- Iowa 12-2
- Michigan State 14-1
- Baylor 13-3
- Texas Tech 16-0
- Ole Miss 14-3
- Ohio State 13-2
- Tennessee 10-3
- USC 10-4
- North Carolina 13-4
- Washington 12-2
- Princeton 13-1
- Nebraska 13-2
Others receiving votes: Illinois 58, Notre Dame 27, Stanford 25, NC State 22, Alabama 13, West Virginia 9, Georgia 5, Duke 3, Oklahoma St. 1.
