Last week was a rough one for the residents of Oxford and students at Ole Miss.
The Rebels’ basketball teams had their games postponed or moved to a different location, while the area recovered from Winter Storm Fern.
“Honestly, I’ve been crying all week just because my heart just hurts for the people in our community,” Ole Miss coach Yollet McPhee-McCuin said. “I’m a humanitarian first, so it’s really been tough for me to watch the people that I spend a lot of time with that come to our games, that are invested in me and my family and this program.
“It’s been hard to watch them sit there and hurt. When they talked about in the Bible about weeping, I understood fully what that meant these last couple days because when you’re in it, you don’t have time to weep. You’re in the fight. But when you’re removed from it, it’s almost like you get a chance to decompress and realize that Oxford got impacted in the way that it did and so many people are still without.”
The Ole Miss women’s basketball team was able to give its fans something to smile about at the end of the week, though. The Rebels beat a No. 5-ranked team for the second time this season, knocking off Vanderbilt 83-75.
“I told the team that this needed to be our way to show that we’re fighting alongside the people that are still there, the line men and women that are there in our county,” McPhee-McCuin said. “The people, we’re lifting them up and wanted to try to bring them some joy.”
Monday’s updated AP Top 25 Women’s College Basketball Poll should bring some joy to the Rebels themselves.
Ole Miss moved up four spots to No. 13 in the new poll. The top of the poll remained the same and Vanderbilt fell two spots to No. 7 as a result of its loss to the Rebels.
This feels like an appropriate response from the voters for Ole Miss. It’s still a little awkward to have the Rebels behind Michigan State (who beat Ole Miss) and Oklahoma (who Ole Miss beat) one spot ahead of the Spartans.
AP Top 25 Women’s College Basketball Poll
- UConn 23-0
- UCLA 21-1
- South Carolina 21-2
- Texas 21-2
- LSU 21-2
- Louisville 21-3
- Vanderbilt 21-2
- Michigan 19-3
- Ohio State 20-3
- Iowa 18-4
- Oklahoma 17-5
- Michigan State 19-3
- Ole Miss 18-4
- TCU 20-3
- Baylor 19-4
- Kentucky 18-5
- Duke 16-6
- Texas Tech 21-3
- Tennessee 14-5
- West Virginia 18-5
- Alabama 19-4
- Maryland 17-6
- Princeton 18-2
- Washington 17-5
- North Carolina 17-5
Others receiving votes: Georgia 66, Rhode Island 26, NC State 20, Nebraska 10, Minnesota 9, Illinois 6, Oklahoma St. 5, Syracuse 5, Iowa St. 4, Fairfield 3, Richmond 1, Southern Cal 1.
