Ole Miss is still 'chewing' on game film against No. 3 USC a week later
When Yolett McPhee-McCuin took the Ole Miss women’s basketball team to Paris, France for last week’s season opener against No. 3 Southern California the main goal was to get her team on film.
Despite coming up short on securing a win over a top 3 team it was still mission accomplished for McCuin.
Eight days later she is still going over that film with her staff and will be doing so for a long time to come. At least until Ole Miss takes on another Power 5 opponent this season, which right now is scheduled to be Boston College on November 25 in the Bahamas.
“We’ve been chewing on it,” McCuin said when talking to the media on Tuesday. “KK (Deans) had just told me she came to watch film before this and she said, ‘Are you really going to pull up the Paris film again?’ I’m like, ‘Absolutely.'”
Coming home with a victory would have been icing on the cake for No. 19 Ole Miss (1-1) but what McCuin did bring back in her luggage will prove valuable through the rest of non-conference play as a preparation tool for Southeastern Conference play to begin in about a month and a half.
The Rebels played the Trojans close in a 68-66 loss at Adidas Arena in Paris. The equivalent of a potential NCAA Tournament matchup taking place the first game of the season is a rarity for the Rebels.
McCuin was not going to waste that opportunity.
“It’s just so much, as a coach, we were able to get from that film,” McCuin added. “Even when I talked to (Southern California’s) staff they’d say the same thing. How often right now in the non-con do you get to play a kind of equal opponent. It’s not wise for you to do it non-stop, especially if you know in conference you’re going to play top teams all the time.
“When you get a film like that so early you can really drive home the things that you want that’s important. As a coaching staff you can look and analyze and say, ‘We need to get better at this,’ or, ‘We do this well. We need to figure out how to make this work.'”
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Ole Miss did not allow jet lag to affect them, securing its third-largest margin of victory ever six days later.
Serving as the home opener the Rebels hosted Arkansas-Pine Bluff, notching its first victory of the year with an 85-24 score.
The Lions were held to 10 total points in the second half by the Rebels defense, the calling card of McCuin’s era in Oxford.
With the scoring being what it was, McCuin still had takeaways from her team’s first game played in the United States this season.
“I was impressed with our maturity,” McCuin said. “I thought that our players came out and treated UAPB with a tremendous amount of respect. I did not see a drop-off of our defensive vitamins. Our system things that are important to us. I saw us really focus on the things we have been talking about in practice.”
Ole Miss is back on the road this week with a game at Delaware State on Thursday at 4:30 p.m. CT. An away game against an opponent like this is rare for a program like the Rebels, but McCuin wanted to get senior forward Madison Scott as close to back home as possible and Delaware State fit the bill.
