Yolett McPhee-McCuin reveals recruiting process of Cotie McMahon to Ole Miss

This offseason Ole Miss looked to make some noise in the Transfer Portal. Head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin was able to do that, adding star Cotie McMahon from Ohio State.

Recently, McPhee-McCuin opened up on McMahon’s recruitment. At one point, she was concerned that McMahon was a player out of reach for Ole Miss, but that quickly proved not to be the case. So, she leaped on the opportunity to add a veteran star.

“It was huge,” Yolett McPhee-McCuin said. “When I got the call that she had entered the portal, well, I kind of saw it but then I got a call from a friend of mine. I said, ‘There’s no way we can get her,’ and he was like, ‘Give her a call. You’d be surprised.’ So, I just reached out.”

It was a busy offseason for Ole Miss in the Transfer Portal. Seemingly, Cotie McMahon would be someone who the coaching staff would have to spend an exponential amount of time recruiting. However, as McPhee-McCuin explained, she was actually the easiest of them to recruit this offseason.

“She was, probably out of the group, the easiest one to recruit,” McPhee-McCuin said. “It took maybe two conversations. She was really businesslike. Came in for maybe eight hours to visit. Committed before she even visited and then I said, ‘I need you to come see the place first.’ Came in the morning and left that afternoon. It was a unique experience.”

Normally when a player is easy to recruit, that’s because the coach and athlete have had a prior relationship of some kind. However, that wasn’t the case here, as McPhee-McCuin emphasized. So, in a lot of ways, Ole Miss has to count itself lucky that she chose to come to Oxford and was even willing to do so sight unseen.

Cotie McMahon is a great player that Ole Miss is getting. In three seasons with Ohio State, she played in and started 97 games. Averaging 30.2 minutes for her career, she has put up 15.3 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game. She did that on 47.2 percent shooting from the field, 30.1 shooting from three-point range, and 64.7 percent shooting from the free-throw line.

Usurpingly, McMahon has received numerous honors. That includes being named the 2023 Big Ten Freshman of the Year and making the All-Big Ten First Team in 2024 and 2025.

Now, at an Ole Miss team that has made four straight NCAA Tournament appearances without getting beyond the Sweet Sixteen, McMahon is looking to help Ole Miss make a deep run. If they were going to get past the Sweet Sixteen, it would be the program’s sixth Elite Eight. They’ve never gone deeper than that.