Ole Miss finally has its SEC opponents for the 2026 season, and the first thing that jumps off the page is simple.
The Rebels get two of the league’s best teams, South Carolina and Texas, inside the SJB Pavilion. If you’re looking for early games to circle, those are the ones.
The full slate came out Tuesday morning as the SEC released matchups for all 16 teams. It’s the usual setup: 14 single-play games plus one rotating home-and-home, which for Ole Miss will be Alabama. Eight at home, eight on the road, and a whole lot of chances to see what this rebuilt roster looks like against the league’s top tier.
The road schedule is no joke.
Vanderbilt is expected to open the year as a top 10 team. LSU is LSU, and that trip always feels like a measuring stick. Tennessee is never easy, and this time it comes with a twist.
Two of Ole Miss’ biggest additions, Talaysia Cooper and Jada Richard, will be walking back into their old gyms. Cooper spent last season at Tennessee. Richard was at LSU. Both were players their former programs wanted to keep. Now they’ll be wearing red and blue when they return.
At home, Ole Miss will host Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and the Alabama return game. That’s a strong mix of winnable matchups and marquee showdowns.
On the road, the Rebels will see Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State, Tennessee, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt. You can already spot the stretch that will define the season.
The SEC schedule starts December 31 and runs through early March, ending with the conference tournament in Greenville. Tip times and TV assignments will come later, but the framework is set.
Year nine for Yolett McPhee-McCuin comes with plenty of momentum. Ole Miss is fresh off a fifth-straight NCAA Tournament appearance and just produced two WNBA draft picks for the first time in program history. A fourth of last year’s roster ended up in WNBA camps. That’s the kind of development pitch that lands you a top three transfer class.
And this class is loaded. Cooper arrives as an All-SEC guard and one of the top transfers in the country. Richard was ranked among the top 15 players in the portal. They’re part of a 10-player newcomer group that gives Ole Miss more depth, more scoring, and more lineup flexibility than it had a year ago.
Now we know who they’ll face and where they’ll face them. The schedule doesn’t hide anything. The toughest games are obvious. The opportunities are too. And with South Carolina and Texas coming to Oxford, the Rebels won’t have to wait long to find out how good this group can be.
