Ole Miss senior forward Starr Jacobs scored a season-high 24 points and grabbed 10 rebounds against No. 23 Vanderbilt on Sunday afternoon, and the Rebels finished off their season sweep of the Commodores with a 76-61 win at Vanderbilt’s Memorial Gymnasium. Vanderbilt entered the game averaging 86.4 points per game, good for seventh nationally.
Ole Miss (15-6, 6-3 SEC) held star freshman guard Mikayla Blakes – the SEC’s second-leading scorer who entered the game averaging 22.4 points – to three first-half points and 16 overall after getting her into early foul trouble. The Rebels forced 18 turnovers in the game and 41 in their two matchups this season. The Commodores (18-5, 5-4) entered Sunday averaging 13.5 turnovers per game, fifth-fewest in the SEC.
“It’s just us playing team defense,” Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin said. “They’re so good from a schematic standpoint that, if you try to play one-on-one against them, they’re going to get open shots, and they don’t miss them.
“So, for us, it was a complete team defense.”
As was the case in the first meeting, the Rebels wreaked havoc early by forcing four turnovers in the first three-and-a-half minutes and six in the first quarter overall. Ole Miss held Vanderbilt to one of its last 11 from the field in the first and led by a point heading to the second.
The Rebels hit 4 of 6 to start the second quarter and took a 32-21 lead into halftime behind eight points from Jacobs, who hit her first five shots from the field and 6 of 7 in the half. Vanderbilt shot just 7 of 25 from the field in the first half.
Vanderbilt found its offensive stride a bit in the third quarter, but the Rebels were even hotter from the field, hitting 10 of 14 attempts while outscoring the Commodores 25-20 in the period and increasing the lead to 16. Blakes, who was coming off a 53-point game against Florida, scored 11 in the third quarter. Sixteen points was her lowest output since totaling 12 against LSU on Jan. 13.
“She’s a special player. I hate that she’s a freshman,” McPhee-McCuin said with a smile. “ … We had to really focus on her. It was a complete team effort. We just didn’t want her to see any shots, and we wanted to make it very hard for her, and I thought we did that.”
Jacobs finished 12 of 13 from the field overall. Senior guard/forward Madison Scott joined Jacobs in double-figure scoring with 16 points. The Rebels scored 54 points in the paint. Ole Miss star freshman guard Sira Thienou, the team’s leading scorer, was held to six points in 16 minutes due to early foul trouble.
“I think it was my teammates around me. The energy was different today,” Jacobs said. “And, defensively, we were on point. So, that opened up a lot for me. When we defend, stuff like this happens every night.”
Ole Miss hosts No. 13 Oklahoma Thursday at 6:30 p.m. The game will be broadcast on SEC Network+.
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