What does the latest bracketology say for Ole Miss women's basketball?
The women’s college basketball season concludes in less than three weeks and Ole Miss has a handful of games remaining in conference play.
The Rebels are in the middle of a week off between games, not playing again until Monday when they host Kentucky at 6 p.m. CT. Their last game was a resounding win over Florida, bouncing back from the loss at Tennessee.
With the final push to the Southeastern Conference Women’s Basketball Tournament and the ensuing NCAA Women’s Tournament after underway, Ole Miss is in a pretty solid position. The win over the Gators put the Rebels (19-5) with eight conference wins, the unofficial threshold to earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Ole Miss has positioned itself with how it started SEC play by winning its first five games. Since then it has gone 3-3 and sitting with a 8-3 SEC record, putting Ole Miss in fourth place of the conference standings.
All of these factors have kept the Rebels firmly inside the NCAA Tournament field projections. ESPN’s Charlie Creme who handles the bracketology for the women’s tournament field has been bullish on Ole Miss since he started this season’s projections.
Creme currently has the Rebels as the 8 Seed in the one half of the Seattle Region. In Tuesday’s bracket update the Rebels were slotted in the Stanford bracket along with No. 1 Seed Stanford, No. 16 Seed Southern Utah and No. 9 Seed Creighton.
Ole Miss heading towards a double-bye in the SEC Tournament and a couple prime opportunities to improve their projected seeding.
After playing the Wildcats to start next week the Rebels then travel to Baton Rouge and take on No. 3 LSU (23-0, 11-0). The week ends with No. 1 South Carolina (23-0, 10-0) coming to Oxford on Feb. 19.
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The Gamecocks and Tigers are ahead of the Rebels in the standings but present major opportunities for Ole Miss to get a signature win to boost that already-appealing NCAA Tournament resume.
Also a chance for Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin to let her team show they belong in the conversation regularly moving forward.
“We had some tough conversations after (the Tennessee game), because I don’t ever want my team to feel like they don’t belong just because we’re not that name brand,” McCuin said last Sunday. “We’re building something, just like Pat Summit built back in the day. …When we step on the floor and we represent Ole Miss people expect us to play at a high level and they expect us to fight.”
The program has shifted dramatically in the four-plus seasons McCuin has been at the helm at Ole Miss. The next couple weeks present the opportunities for the Rebels to show it can continue shifting and join the conversation.
