The Ole Miss women’s basketball team has no choice but to bounce back.
If it doesn’t, No. 1 South Carolina will make sure today is another forgettable day in the Southeastern Conference.
Ole Miss (14-7, 4-4 SEC) will try to prevent that from happening at 3:30 p.m. today (ESPNU) when it plays host to No. 1 South Carolina (20-0, 8-0) at Tad Smith Coliseum in Oxford.
Ole Miss will try to erase the memory of a 70-41 loss to LSU on Thursday night in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The 41 points was the lowest output of the season for the Rebels, who were 13 of 56 (23.2 percent) from the field. The total was the sixth lowest in program history and the fewest in coach Matt Insell’s year and a half at the school.
“We have to take a deep breath,” Insell said. “If we beat South Carolina on Sunday we will be 5-4 in the league. If we lose to South Carolina we will be 4-5 in the league, and we still will have plenty of opportunities to get to where we want, so we have to stay the course and get back to doing what we were doing.”
Insell said the Rebels were going to try to do that Friday with a return to a style of practice he used more earlier in the season that was designed to force the players to get after it and to instill toughness. He said he felt those qualities were lacking in losses to Texas A&M, Mississippi State, and LSU.
“We have to make it tough on the other team and get back to what we do,” Insell said. “I told them to take a selfie of themselves and to reach down inside and pull some more out of you. They have done a pretty good job to this point, but there is so much more that can do.”
Ole Miss already has eclipsed its win total from last season (12). It needs one more victory to guarantee it will finish the regular season with a winning record. If that happens, Ole Miss likely will return to the postseason. That is a significant step with a young team that had three first-year players in the program — freshmen A’Queen Hayes and Shandricka Sessom and sophomore transfer Erika Sisk — in the starting lineup against LSU.
Insell acknowledged that the mental part of the game was a key to his team’s performance against LSU. He said he had planned to go recruiting Friday night and was going to have one of his assistant coaches run a lighter practice. But Insell said he changed his mind and opted to stay in Oxford to run the practice in an attempt to help the team regroup.
“If we had a turnover, or if it was a loose ball, or if we missed a box out, or missed a rebound, they let it carry over to the next play and we didn’t play the next play,” Insell said. “We have to do a better job of that, and we will.”
South Carolina will make everything Ole Miss attempts difficult. Insell said coach Dawn Staley’s squad is “the best team I have watched or scouted on tape in my seven years in the league.” In Alaina Coates, Tiffany Mitchell, Aleighsa Welch, and A’ja Wilson, South Carolina has four players who are on the watch list for the Naismith Award, which goes to the best player in women’s college basketball.
To get a sense of South Carolina’s depth of dominance, the Gamecocks lead the SEC in scoring (79.1 points per game) opponents’ scoring (50.2 ppg.), scoring margin (28.8 ppg.), field goal percentage (49.2 percent), opponents’ field goal percentage (33.2), 3-point shooting percentage (34.5), rebounding margin (11.8), blocked shots (6.3), and assists (18.2).
“South Carolina is really, really good,” Insell said. “We know that. No matter what happened (against LSU) we knew (today) was going to be really tough. They are just dominant. They have the best two guard in the league. They have the best small forward in the league. They have the best power forward in the league. They have the best center in the league.”
But Insell said Ole Miss isn’t going to shy away from the challenge. He said his job is to get the Rebels away from playing “finesse” games like they have played in their past three outings and to get them back to harassing other teams on defense and to attacking the basket on offense. Insell likes his team’s chances today, the rest of the season, and moving forward if his players get back to playing that style.
“Why is South Carolina good? South Carolina is good because Dawn Staley stuck to a process,” Insell said. “The first year they struggled. The second year they struggled. The third year they were better, and the fourth year they went to the NCAA tournament. From there, the program took off. She stuck to the process and the administration believed in the process. It is the same thing we have here. We are going to keep building it. A lot of what we’re doing here is the same blueprint.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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