OXFORD — Together. Toughness. Forty minutes.
Those are mantras Matt Insell will use as he enters his fourth season as coach of the Ole Miss women’s basketball team.
All three were on display Wednesday, as Ole Miss held the first of 10 practices before it departs for a 10-day tour of Costa Rica. The trip on Aug. 1-10 will include three exhibition games that will help the team build chemistry for a 2016-17 season Insell hopes will transform the fortunes of a program that went 10-20 (2-14 in the Southeastern Conference) in 2015-16.
“We will play three games and we’re going to spend about five days on the beach area and take them swimming with the dolphins, they’re going to go on a zipline, do some community service stuff, and a lot of team stuff,” Insell said. “I think it is going to be huge for them jelling together because we have a lot of new faces.”
This will be Ole Miss’ first international trip since it went to Canada in 2011. The Rebels also went to the Bahamas in 2007.
Ole Miss will bring its entire 2016-17 team on the trip, including freshmen Shelby Gibson, Kaitlyn Rodgers, and Bree Glover and Kentucky transfer Chrishae Rowe.
Per NCAA rules, incoming players who take and pass at least three credits during summer school are eligible to travel on the trip.
Ole Miss returns six of its top seven scorers from last season. The Rebels will move on without point guard A’Queen Hayes, who was dismissed from the team in the spring and transferred to Eastern Kentucky.
Sessom, a 5-foot-10 junior guard from Byhalia, was the only Ole Miss player to score in double figures last season (15.6 points per game). She took double the number of shots of every player on the team except one last season.
“(The trip) will help because we will have three games that will be like practice games so we can see where we are going to be coming into the season,” Sessom said.
Sisk, a 5-9 senior, will transition from two guard to the point this season. She likely will split time at that position with sophomore Alissa Alston.
Sisk never has been out of the United States, so she is eager to take the trip and to reap the rewards from 10 days of team bonding.
“I am looking at the trip as something that is going to show me what I need to work on for the team and to get better,” Sisk said. “As for the team, I feel like this trip is the same way. We all need to see things we need to work on and what other teams will do against us. It is a jumpstart for us to get better, and to get team chemistry.”
Rowe, a 5-10 guard, sat out the 2015-16 season. She was dismissed from the team at Kentucky in October 2015. She will be eligible for games at Ole Miss following the fall semester of the 2016-17 season.
“We have a lot more depth this year,” Insell said. “I think we will come together. This team has a chance to be real good. We are very talented.”
As a freshman at Oregon in 2013-14, Rowe earned Pacific-12 Conference Freshman of the Year honors and earned All-Pac 12 honors. She led the Ducks in scoring (21.6 ppg.) in 32 games. Her 690 points were the most by a freshman in Oregon history, and the 12th most in Pac-12 single-season history. She was four points shy of breaking the Oregon single-season scoring record of 693, set by Alison Lang in 1982-83.
On Wednesday, the Rebels wore shirts with the school colors to signify the importance of Insell’s message. Insell was decked out in a powder blue T-shirt that had “Toughness” on it, while some players had blue T-shirts with “40 minutes” and others had whites one with the word “Together.”
All of the colors blended together in an energetic two-hour practice that served as an official welcome back to work and a place-setter for the things the Rebels will need to do in Costa Rica and in the coming months to prepare for the 2016-17 season.
Insell said Toughness, Together, and 40 minutes will be constants this season, along with phrases like “control what you can control” and words like “energy” and “enthusiasm.” Insell’s goal is to meld all of them together to create a team that can move up the ladder in the ultra-competitive SEC.
“Forty minutes applies because it is a 40-minute game,” Insell said. “As for toughness, we always talk about our purpose is to be the toughest team in the country. Our slogan this year is it’s time. It’s time to stop talking. It’s time to show what you can do. It’s time for us to start competing at the top of this league. It’s time for us to compete for a SEC title and to get back to the Elite Eight, Sweet 16. We’re talking about that every day.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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