Ole Miss basketball programs heading down two different paths this postseason
The Ole Miss basketball program is heading in two directions as the postseason is in full swing.
The women’s team is getting their dancing shoes sized up while the men’s team is doing some soul searching of sorts. One team experienced the best season in three decades while the other experienced one of its worst, but with some challenges that were out of their control.
Coming off a run to the semifinals of the SEC Tournament — for only the third time in program history — last week in Nashville, the women solidified their ticket to next week’s NCAA Tournament.
A berth to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 15 years was already a lock for the women, last week’s run through the tournament ensured a top 10 seed. The latest projections by ESPN bracketologist Charlie Creme has the Rebels as the No. 6 Seed in the Bridgeport Region, starting in Iowa City against No. 10 Seed Washington State.
In their semifinal loss to No. 1 South Carolina, the Rebels trailed by nearly 20 points but rallied in the fourth quarter before coming up short.
“There was a moment in the third quarter where when I started to just say, ‘Ladies, it looks like we’re laying down. We can’t lay down. We’re a six seed Charlie Creme says,'” McCuin said postgame. “‘A six seed doesn’t lay down. We have all these people here and we have to perform, no matter what. Nobody thought we were going to beat South Carolina anyway, but we need to perform. We need to look like a NCAA Tournament team. We can’t quit.'”
The women are also coming off a 22-win regular season, including its first 10 SEC-win season since 1991-92, in the fourth year of head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin’s tenure. It has been part of her vision to rebuild a program from the ground up that was on life-support when she arrived in Oxford.
A run to the WNIT Championship game a year ago was part of the spark that ignited the success that was coming this season, with more success on the horizon with the Rebels’ season not over.
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Wednesday ended the men’s season, which also happens to be the fourth of head coach Kermit Davis’ tenure.
The feeling within the men’s program is a complete 180-degrees from how the women’s locker room is feeling.
A season where the men struggled to get four conference wins and having their worst SEC season since about as long as the women had waited to win 10 conference games.
Coming off the loss to Missouri in the opening round of the SEC Tournament in Tampa, there was acknowledgment of the disappointment of this season and what must be done in a crucial offseason for the program.
“We envisioned us to be an NCAA Tournament team and I still think, no excuses, that if we’re whole (we are),” Davis said. “We sure didn’t look like one tonight.”
The roads in the offseason are much different for the two basketball programs, no matter how the women’s season ends up. One will be building off a historic year and massive momentum while the other will be trying to regain that momentum from the ground up.
