Ole Miss Women’s Hoops Wins Big Over Louisiana-Monroe
OXFORD, Miss. (WCBI/Ole Miss Athletics) – The Ole Miss women’s basketball team moved to 6-0 at The Pavilion at Ole Miss with a 97-40 win over La.-Monroe on Saturday afternoon. Sophomore Madinah Muhammad (Chicago, Ill.) led the Ole Miss offense with 21 points for her third game of 20+ points this season, while classmate Alissa Alston (New Haven, Conn.) dished out a career-best nine assists.
After a heartbreaking loss to No. 16 West Virginia in their last outing, Ole Miss (7-2) came out on fire in the first half shooting 48.5 percent and building a 38-point halftime lead on the strength of 13 points from Muhammad and Shandricka Sessom (Byhalia, Miss.) in the first two quarters.
Shelby Gibson (Murfreesboro, Tenn.), making her first career start, got the first field goal for Ole Miss as the 8:37 mark and scored five of Ole Miss’ first nine points ad Ole Miss pulled ahead, 11-0 forcing the Warhawks to call a timeout at the 6:06 mark to try and stop the Rebel momentum.
The Warhawks timeout didn’t stop the Rebels offense as Ole miss ran its lead to 19-0 highlighted by triples from Sessom and Muhammad. The Warhawks got on the board at the 2:45 mark with a bucket underneath, but Ole Miss started to heat up from long range with two treys from Torri Lewis (Olive Branch, Miss.) as Ole Miss took a 31-5 lead at the end of the first quarter.
The Ole Miss offense didn’t slow much in the second quarter, extending their lead to 34 points at the media timeout. The Rebels held the Warhawks to 4-of-24 shooting (.167 percent) for the half and the 38-point scoring margin for the first half is the fourth largest in a half.
La-Monroe started the second half much better and shot 71.4 percent in the third quarter for 24 points, but Ole Miss (7-2) continued their hot shooting as they doubled up the Warhawks midway through the quarter. Bretta Hart (Poplarville, Miss.) provided a spark off the bench with 10 points in the third quarter. The Rebels held the Warhawks without a field goal in the fourth quarter as they extended their home unbeaten streak to six straight.
From The Head Coach
On the win…
“Real proud of our girls. They played extremely hard coming off exams and coming off a layoff. To be able to come back and play that well is great. It was a dominant performance by our basketball team, a complete overall, dominant performance, and we needed that going into Wednesday. Real proud of our team—25 assists on 33 made shots, that’s a big number. That’s just huge, and I’m so proud of them.”
On the energy and attitude of this team…
“Our energy, our enthusiasm, our kids just enjoy playing this game. I enjoy coaching them and they enjoy playing with each other. It’s just fun to coach this basketball team the way they’re playing and how hard they play. I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
On Wednesday’s meeting with Oregon…
“It’s a huge game. We have a Power 5 team coming in here, a team that’s lost one game, a team that’s going to be a NCAA tournament team. They have one of the best players in the country on their roster. We’re going to have to be ready to play. We need people here. It’s going to be an NCAA tournament game. We need a big-time atmosphere for this game. It’s going to be two really good, extremely talented teams going at it. We need our fans. We need Rebel nation here. This will be a big game come March for us. If we get this win, it’s a resume-building game.”
On the health of the team…
“Chrishae Rowe will be ready. We’ll have all 13 of them out there. We rested Taylor (Manuel) a bit today. We’ll do that from time to time. It’s good because it gets Cecilia Muhate and Kate Rodgers more minutes. For us to get to the tournament this year, we’re going to need Ceci and Kate to be really good. They got great minutes today. Just real proud of them all.”
Rebel Sidelines
-Shelby Gibson made her first career start in tonight’s contest. She is the second freshman to earn a start this season, joining Kate Rodgers.
-With the win, Ole Miss moves takes a 14-2 series advantage and has now won the last 11 games in the series.
-Ole Miss’ 38-point scoring margin in the first half is tied or the fourth largest in a half
-The 57-point margin of victory is the fifth largest in school history
-Ole Miss moves to 6-0 at The Pavilion this season. It is the best home record to start the season in the Insell era and the best start since a 7-0 start at home in 2012-13.
-Each of Ole Miss’ players that saw time on the court scored at least two points.
-Alissa Alston had a career-best 9 assists and has now dished out five or more assists in three of the last four games.
Up Next
Ole Miss welcomes Oregon from the Pac 12 to The Pavilion at Ole Miss on Wednesday. Tipoff is set for 6 pm.
Next Five Games
Dec. 14 – vs. Oregon 6 PM
Dec. 17 – vs. VCU 1 PM
Dec. 20 – vs. Austin Peay 6 PM
Dec. 28 – vs. Mississippi Valley State 6 PM
Jan. 1 – vs. Arkansas 4 PM
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