Ole Miss Rebels Look to Continue Cinderella Run Against Notre Dame in Sweet 16 Clash
The Rebels, who had defeated Gonzaga in the first round, advanced to the Sweet 16 as just the sixth No. 8 seed, only to be beaten by Louisville there.
Today at Purcell Pavilion at 2 p.m., Ole Miss (24-8) and head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin will try to make history by taking against Notre Dame (27-6) as the top-seeded Rebels.
“I watched the game last year when she defeated Stanford; she’s such a wonderful emerging star. The sixth-year Ole Miss coach, who is from the Bahamas and announced this month that she will be returning as head coach for the Bahamian Senior National Team, “brought her program to the Sweet 16 was massive for her program and her era,” said Niele Ivey, the coach at Notre Dame.
“She is performing admirably. They are excellent athletes who play hard for her. They are also well balanced both offensively and defensively, and they have a lot of weapons.
“A lot” is emphasized. The Rebels defeated 10th-seeded Marquette (23-9) 67-55 on Saturday, a game in which seven different players got substantial playing time. This season, nine Rebels have played at least 12 minutes per game.
Yolett McPhee-McCuin stated on Sunday, “As far as the experience goes, hopefully it does work out for us, but as you can see, we rely on a bunch of different players throughout the game.” “Maybe not all of their stats are visible in the box score, therefore, I don’t think our depth is discussed much, but depth is defined as any situation in which players can play minutes without endangering themselves. Whether the score was the same when they entered and exited doesn’t matter to me. The crucial aspect is that they weren’t negative.
Against the Golden Eagles, Madison Scott scored a team-high 20 points on 10-of-17 shooting to lead the Rebels. He also had four assists. With an average of 12.7 points per game and 6.5 rebounds per game, the 6-foot-2 senior is leading Ole Miss in shooting percentage at 49.5%.
Maddy Westbeld, a senior at Notre Dame, described her as “a great player.” Today’s practice went well; we were essentially just working with their team strategically. Their offensive is effective. Try to play her hard, please.
While Ole Miss isn’t playing at full strength—guard graduate student KK Deans suffered a season-ending knee injury in November, and senior forward Snudda Collins “decided to take a step back for a second” and did not travel to South Bend with the team—the Rebels should still have an advantage over Notre Dame, who only had six players play meaningful minutes in Saturday’s victory over Kent State, with three of those players finishing with four fouls.
Ivey stated, “We’ve been in this situation before, and I always talk about how important it is to defend without fouling.” Accordingly, part of it is just picking things up on the fly while playing the game and making adjustments and pivots. And hopefully, we got our lesson yesterday.
You know, we had a few fouls that came from screening fouls, stuff that we could have cleaned up, a few touch fouls, and we weren’t reprimanded. Hopefully, tomorrow will bring about the adjustments we discussed last night and today.
A career-high 29 points was scored by junior guard Sonia Citron, while senior forward Natalija Marshall scored seven points and pulled down seven rebounds in her second start of the season. Saturday’s first-round game was just the second for Notre Dame since senior forward Kylee Watson tore her ACL in the ACC Tournament semifinal.
“I’m really pleased with Nat. In essence, she’s taking up the challenge, and she did it even in the absence of Kylee, according to Ivey. She has watched us make it to the Sweet 16 the last several seasons, so she is aware of the time in which we are merely a part of this program.
That being said, I am incredibly proud of her for simply seizing her opportunity. I’m pretty happy with her effort and performance because she came in and played really, really well the last two games.