Yolett McPhee-McCuin Has 10 Newcomers And A One-Half Team, With Ohio State Coming

Yolett McPhee-McCuin used a longer break between games to do something coaches rarely say they do: she asked her players what they thought was going wrong. On Tuesday she shared what came out of that conversation, and it was not flattering. Ole Miss, she said, is playing like half a team.

“Right now we’re one half team and so we have to put two halves together.”

Yolett McPhee-McCuin

That is the tension of the Rebels’ early season. McPhee-McCuin’s teams are built on how they play, and she says this group has not yet shown it in a game. The reason she gave is the roster.

A brand new team

Ole Miss brought in 10 newcomers in the offseason, and McPhee-McCuin said the problem runs deeper than that number:

“Yeah, there’s 10 new players, but I really have a brand new team. I don’t have any returners that have any experience that can help the team in any way because they didn’t play.”

Yolett McPhee-McCuin

Her point is that players who were on last season’s roster but did not play cannot show the newcomers what an Ole Miss game should feel like. “When you play, you have a different understanding,” she said. So the staff has spent the break teaching what she calls the Ole Miss way, “what that looks like and sounds like and feels like when they’re on the basketball court.”

It also means she is not taking any opponent lightly. “There are no gimme games with this group,” she said, and she cannot assume the team knows anything she has not taught it directly.

What has not shown up yet

The most important part of the presser came when she was asked what she wants to see before Ole Miss’s first road trip, to Ohio State. Her answer was a frank admission that practice is not carrying over to games:

“We have not seen our players come out and look like things that we’ve practiced. So they’re not translating it yet. I don’t know if it’s the bright lights, I don’t know what it is, but that is our issue.”

Yolett McPhee-McCuin

She listed what she wants back, and they are the things she said Ole Miss is known for: clean up the rebounding, get out in transition, and “dictate and disrupt defensively.” She said the team does those things for one half and not the other. Her bar for the next two games is not makes and misses. It is whether the film shows players knowing what they were trying to do:

“Doesn’t matter if you made or missed the shot, we know what you were attempting to do in that space.”

Yolett McPhee-McCuin

The take

This is a coach being honest early, and it is the right time to be. Albany, which she called “a really confident group” that she does not think has lost a game, comes to Oxford on Wednesday night, and Louisiana Tech follows. Those are the last two chances to see two full halves before Ohio State, which will be the first game under the kind of lights she said her players may not be used to yet. If the Rebels still look like a one-half team in Columbus, the newness explanation runs out. If they put two halves together before then, McPhee-McCuin’s week of listening will have paid off.

Photo: Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin during the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament semifinals, March 7, 2026, at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, South Carolina. Credit: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.