Oxford, Mississippi:
The Ole Miss Lady Rebels opened the day with a heartbreaking loss to New Orleans.
The Rebels fought hard to come back but eventually fell short 69-64.
Jayla Alexander led the Rebels in scoring with 21 points and three rebounds.
The Lady Rebels shot 44.2 from the field ( 23-52) and 42.1% from behind the arc.
Coach Yo had this to say about the loss:
“I just think right now we’re not the tougher team, and when you’re not tough, you turn the ball over,” said Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin. “I wasn’t confident coming into this game because I didn’t feel like we had a lot of good practices. With a team that is young like this, we’re going to have to take losses to learn from it. As a staff, we saw it coming, but this team is stubborn enough that they needed to get a loss. We needed this.”
The Lady Rebels will return to action next Tuesday night at Southern Miss.
The second half of the doubleheader saw the Ole Miss Men's basketball team take on a feisty Western Michigan team, with the Rebels coming out on top 85-58.
For a vast majority of the first half, the Broncos were hanging close with the Rebels. The Rebels eventually pulled away in the closing seconds of the first half. Ole Miss was able to take a 40-32 lead to the break.
That eight-point lead sparked the Rebels to start the second half with a bit of a spark in their step. The Rebels finally put the nail in the coffin with 13:35 left in the game with a 60-39 lead.
For the second straight game, it was the duo of Breein Tyree and Devonta Shuler, who pushed the Rebels to another win. The two combined for 36 points. Breein Tyree led the Rebels in scoring with 20 points.
Head Coach Kermit Davis had this to say about the win over Western Michigan.
"Give Western Michigan credit, I think they came out confident. They had won three games, and they won a road game. We came out flat, the ball didn't move, and we didn't play with toughness defensively. We played a bunch of different people trying to find some guys. The 2-3 zone kind of turned the game around with the rhythm of their offense. I thought that the last six or eight minutes of the first half, we competed well. The ball moved and we got in transition. We can be good in transition. Good win, any time you win in college basketball is great. We continue to defend, (holding them to) 33.9 percent, that is terrific. As long as we keep doing that, we're going to have a chance to be in a lot of games and win some big games. When you do that, hopefully, you can build to win big games on the road."
The Rebels will return home on Tuesday night to face Seattle, before heading to Memphis to take on Penny Hardaway and the Tigers on Saturday.
Next Saturday at Memphis will be the first road game of the year for the Rebels and here's what Head Coach Kermit Davis said about that game and staying focused on one game at a time.
"It's not a coach's cliché. We just have to worry about getting ourselves better and beating Seattle. I think that everybody knows that in college basketball, anything can happen. We'll focus on the Memphis Tigers on Tuesday night after the Seattle game. With or without him (James Wiseman), they are very good. People can see how good their team is. And I think every time they've played without him, they're undefeated. They are really good with him and they are really good without him, but we have to get ready for Seattle on Tuesday."