When a team loses its identity, it loses its edge—and Ole Miss is currently bleeding both.
A few years ago, Coach Yo's squad was "the most tenacious defense in the country." They were a defensive juggernaut, even the toughest offense in the country would fear in 2022-2023.
In the same year, they held 11 opponents to under 50 points — a school record — and famously used that "signature defense" to upset #1 Stanford in the NCAA Tournament, holding a high-powered Cardinal offense to just 49 points.
But, soemthing shifted at the beginning of this year. The Rebels were constantly scoring 80+ points, 13 times this year to be precise. Naturally, this got them excited to consider what rebranding themselves as an offensive team would look like.
It worked out fine till they encountered the heavyweights, and their offense couldn't match theirs. What's worse was that this time, they did not have that "stingy defense" mentality to fall back on.
Yolett McPhee-McCuin says its time to fix Ole Miss's identity crisis
The result was Ole Miss losing three-games straight in the final week of the regular season, putting their chance of having a postseason they worked the whole year for at risk.
After an embarrassing 74-67 loss to an unranked Florida — a win that they were supposed to have under their belt, Coach Yo finally put her foot down on Ole Miss's identity crisis.
The women's basketball coach said how she was "really disappointed" in their performance on Wednesday, and how it called for an urgent need to go back to their original selves.
"Defensively. We did just an awful job," Coach Yo said in her post-game press conference.
"We used to be a defensive team, and now, because we've been scoring a lot of points. We've really got excited about that, and that's just not our identity, and it can't be our identity right now, because we have people that are out, saying. So it's just disappointing when we're out here, and we're not defending at a high level, we don't even have a chance to win because our offense is not playing. So we got to get back to who we want to be our identity, and come out and be better defensively."
"So, we gotta get back defensive-minded and figure out how to be stingy and just get these games out."
All that said, there is hardly any time left for Coach Yo to guide the team back to being their defense-heavy style, with just one regular season game remaining against Texas A&M at home.