Yolett McPhee-McCuin walked to the podium at Colonial Life Arena on Sunday with the composure of a coach who has long understood that defeat, when it comes at the hands of a program like South Carolina, is not a referendum on your program — it is a data point. What followed was one of the most candid, analytically rich, and genuinely entertaining post-game press conferences of the college basketball season.
Here is everything she said, and what it all means.
“It Was a Snowball Effect From There”
Coach Yo opened with a moment that deserves far more attention than it will likely receive in the postgame coverage — the turning point at 24-20.
“I just thought it was a great environment. You know, South Carolina is very good. I thought that we had some chances to do some things when the score was 24-20, and I remember there were a couple of championship plays, loose ball plays, and they came on the winning side of it and started their run, and I felt like it was a snowball effect from there. But we’re going to definitely use this opportunity to watch film like I’m really excited to see that rest up and then move forward.”
The detail buried in that opening statement is significant. At 24-20, this was a game. Ole Miss was competing, pushing back, and making South Carolina work for every basket. The margin was four points, and in a game played inside one of the most electric home environments in women’s college basketball, four points is nothing.
But Coach Yo pinpointed something that separates elite programs from very good ones — championship plays. Not schemes, not talent differentials, not fatigue. Loose balls. Hustle plays. The small, unglamorous moments that decide games when everything else is equal. South Carolina won those moments, and the snowball that followed — a 12-2 run, then a 15-3 run, then nine-point quarters for Ole Miss — was the inevitable consequence. It is a masterclass in situational awareness from a head coach to identify the exact moment a game shifted and articulate precisely why.
McMahon’s Difficult Night: “I Just Don’t Know of a Really Good Player That Hasn’t Had a Night Like This”
The room wanted to talk about Cotie McMahon. The second-leading scorer in the SEC, a genuine All-American candidate averaging 20.7 points per game, finished with two points on 0-of-9 shooting. Coach Yo addressed it with both grace and sharp tactical insight.
“Yeah, I just don’t know, of like, a really good player that just hadn’t had a night like this. Unfortunately, this was hers. This is someone that is, like second leading scorer in the SEC, I think so. And I thought they did a good job as far as scheming, you know, I’m a big Raven Johnson fan. I thought she really did a good job. I thought the way she sat down and took the challenge was good.”
“But I thought as a team, they did a good job, like one person can’t guard Cotie, all right. And I thought that they did a good job from a schematic standpoint, saying, ‘You know what, if y’all gonna beat us, it’s gonna be someone else.’ And that’s a great opportunity for people like the other players to step up and do what they got to do. And it probably could have made the load a little easier had they done that.”
This is coaching insight delivered in plain language. Coach Yo is not making excuses for McMahon — she is explaining the chess match that Dawn Staley’s staff won on Sunday. South Carolina’s defensive philosophy against McMahon was not to simply assign one player to stop her. It was to build a schematic wall — essentially daring everyone else on the Ole Miss roster to beat them. When your star is neutralized and the supporting cast cannot fill the void, 0-of-9 nights happen, regardless of talent level.
Her singling out of Raven Johnson is also analytically notable. Johnson’s defensive effort often goes unrecognized precisely because it does not show up in traditional box score categories. But Coach Yo — a coach who has been around this game long enough to watch film at a level most fans never access — saw exactly what Johnson was doing and gave her flowers for it publicly. That kind of acknowledgment from an opposing head coach means more than a thousand highlight clips.
The Madina Okot Moment: “When She Started Looking Like Steph Curry, I Was Like, We Might As Well Pack It Up”
This was the moment of the press conference. Full stop.
“Yeah, when I saw her start making threes, I was like, sht, it’s over for us. I mean, like, it’s one thing to have to battle with her around the basket. When she started looking like Steph Curry, I was like, we might as well pack it up.”*
“You know, I just think they did a great job developing her confidence. I always thought she was super talented. I remember at Mississippi State, like I was scared straight about her and you know, it makes a difference when you’re around the level type players she’s around, and when you’re around championship players, like you start to move like that and embody that identity. And I think she’s doing that. She always had all of this skill. You know, it’s just really being brought out because now she’s with some really good players.”
The Steph Curry comparison sounds like hyperbole in isolation. In context, it is a precise tactical observation from a coach who faced Okot at Mississippi State last season and knows exactly what she looked like before she arrived in Columbia. Coach Yo is not saying Okot is Steph Curry. She is saying that when a player of Okot’s size and interior dominance adds a legitimate, repeatable three-point shot to her arsenal, the defensive calculus becomes impossible. You cannot sag off her. You cannot double-team the post. You cannot do anything without leaving someone dangerously open.
Okot went 3-of-3 from three-point range on Sunday and 5-of-5 over her last two games. She is not a big who occasionally drifts outside — she is a double-double machine with a clean, confident stroke from the perimeter. Coach Yo, watching that unfold from the opposing bench, understood before anyone else in the building that Ole Miss had no answer. Hence, “we might as well pack it up.”
Her point about environment and championship culture developing talent is equally profound. Okot always had the skill. What South Carolina gave her was the context, the teammates, the coaching, and the daily standard that unlocked it. That is program-building, and Coach Yo recognizes it because she is attempting to do the same thing in Oxford.
NCAA Tournament Hosting Hopes: “I Haven’t Seen Any Other Team Get Punished After Losing to South Carolina”
Asked about Ole Miss’s chances of hosting NCAA Tournament games as a potential Top 16 seed, Coach Yo shifted from gracious to pointed — and she was not wrong.
“Well, I hadn’t seen any other team get punished after losing to South Carolina, so hopefully we don’t, and that’s for who needs to hear it, you know? Because I’ve watched their games, you know. Okay, the score doesn’t look great, but they still beat teams by 30. So I mean, and I’m talking about people didn’t even move. So if we move, I’m going to be shocked. Obviously, the next two games are very important to us. I don’t think we can afford to drop those.”
“And, you know, this is a tough environment to play. We had, I think, like 8000 people, and it was rocking in the pavilion the other day. And this is times two, and as soon as we started to make a run, they’re so like, well coached. As soon as we started to make a run, it was like a pandemonium, like I was at a concert. Now, for me, I’m used to it. I’ve been playing against Dawn since I was at Jacksonville so this is nothing to me, but for people like my young people that had to step up because Cotie’s off shooting night, it was a shock, and that’s the home court advantage that they have. But I’m grateful for it, because I do believe that we can make a run in March, and it will prepare us.”
This answer deserves to be read carefully. Coach Yo is making a legitimate argument to the selection committee in real time. She is saying, with receipts, that losing to South Carolina by a large margin is not an indictment of Ole Miss’s quality — it is an expected outcome that other highly ranked programs have experienced without losing seeding ground. The fact that she said it publicly, with the confidence of someone who has done the research, signals that Ole Miss’s résumé — wins over Vanderbilt on the road, Oklahoma on the road, and Tennessee at home — should carry far more weight than a Sunday afternoon blowout in Columbia.
Her description of Colonial Life Arena as “a concert” is also telling. This is not a coach who crumbles under the weight of hostile environments — she grew up coaching in this conference and has faced Dawn Staley many times. But for her younger players stepping into that atmosphere for the first time, in a game where their leading scorer had gone cold, it was a genuine test of mental fortitude that she believes will ultimately make them better.
The Glass Half Full Philosophy: “I Remember Mississippi State Losing by a Large Portion to UConn”
On the emotional toll of the week’s brutal schedule, Coach Yo offered her most revealing and philosophically grounded answer of the entire press conference.
“Think for us, it depends on how you look at it, you know, like if you look at that half glass empty, then you’re going to just feel sorry for yourself, if you look at it half glass full. This is really like an incredible opportunity that we had in these four games, because one, it’s just us and Tennessee that experienced it.”
“The NCAA tournament will not be like this. The SEC tournament is grueling, kind of like this, but at least it’s not anybody’s home site. Yeah, it’s in South Carolina, but it’s a difference when you’re here versus where we’ll be going. And we just are going to really use this opportunity and look at film. You know, I think I look young, so maybe people think I’m young. But, you know, I remember Mississippi State losing by a large portion to UConn, and then beating them to go to the championship game that same year. This, it depends on how you want to take it, look at it. For us. We’re gonna, I’m not gonna let my team sit around and sulk. We’re gonna look at it half glass, full, a tremendous amount of film, and against a team that we know is SEC champion, I think maybe, or definitely going to be a Final Four contender, plus the other games we’ve played, I like where we’re at.”
The Mississippi State-UConn reference is the most strategically important thing Coach Yo said all afternoon. She is drawing on documented historical precedent — a team absorbing a significant regular-season loss to a dominant program and then defeating that same program weeks later on the biggest stage in the sport — to reframe Sunday’s result not as a failure but as preparation. It is not spin. It is coaching. It is the kind of long-game thinking that separates programs that make deep tournament runs from programs that fold when adversity arrives.
The Starter Out, the Depth Built: “Anybody Who Counts Us Out Can’t Count”
When pressed on how much weight to assign Sunday’s performance given the circumstances, Coach Yo delivered perhaps her most defiant statement of the afternoon — and it was backed by substance.
“Yeah, you know, I for me, I kind of wanted to, I felt like I really believe in my team, right? And we have really left it out from Kentucky, but for me, I just kind of look at this as a great experience. Here’s a kid like Tianna Thompson that never, basically never, played for me and just had a blast and took 19 shots.”
“Okay, I have a starter out. So not only do we have a grueling week, but I have a starter out, someone that is very important to what we do. We’re not as deep as South Carolina is, but this opportunity that we’re faced with does allow us to build our depth. And so I kind of look at it like that. You know, anybody who counts us out can’t count, you know, because if y’all think that Dawn thought they was just gonna blow us out like she, first of all, she don’t even move like that. Second of all, the brand of basketball we’ve been playing like, you cannot take us lightly.”
“And so I just think we get through these next two games, we figure out a way to win those. We reset. We go in the SEC tournament, and I feel like I made it clear about how I feel about the tournament and how grueling it is on us, and then we rest and we prepare for March. And if we get to host, great, we know what that feels like. And if we got to go on the road, we’ve beaten Oklahoma on the road, we beat Vandy on the road, like we’ve won games on the road. So it’s nothing for us. We’ll be ready to make a deep run.”
Lost in the noise of a 37-point defeat is the fact that Ole Miss played this game without a starter. Coach Yo chose not to lead with that information — she is not a coach who leans on injury reports as crutches — but it is material context. A shortened rotation, exhausted legs, a neutralized star scorer, and a hostile environment that holds 18,000 people. That Ole Miss kept it to 24-20 at any point in this game is, on reflection, a testament to how well-coached this program genuinely is.
Her road record argument is also concrete: wins at Oklahoma, wins at Vanderbilt. These are not flukes against lesser competition. They are results that demonstrate a team capable of winning in difficult environments when healthy and rested — exactly what March demands.
The Final Word on South Carolina: “Raven Johnson Is the Best Point Guard in the Country”
Asked about South Carolina’s twin towers shooting above 40% from three, Coach Yo closed the press conference with what amounted to a comprehensive scouting report delivered with the warmth of genuine respect.
“You know what, this is like my first time really watching them because it always seems like I never had a chance to really watch South Carolina. They’re really, really good. And they’ve had ups and downs too. They’ve had people out, too. And Dawn is a championship coach, and I think they’re starting to play their best basketball, too. I would’ve loved to play this game at full strength because I would’ve loved to see what it would look like.”
“Obviously, we expect to have Sirah and Jayla back when it’s time for us to go in March, and I really would have loved to see where we stood in this situation. But I think that they’re really good. I think that Raven Johnson does not get the credit that she should. I think that she is the best point guard in the country, and she makes them go, and sometimes you don’t see it in the scorebook, but what she does you can’t teach, and I think that their team is really coming along and becoming what coach expects them to be in March.”
Calling Raven Johnson the best point guard in the country is a statement that will generate headlines, and it should. Coming from an opposing head coach who has just spent a game watching her up close — not on film, not from the broadcast booth, but from the sideline — it carries the full weight of professional credibility. What Coach Yo is identifying in Johnson is exactly what great point guards provide: the intangible connective tissue that holds a team together, communicates the system, controls tempo, and makes everyone around her better without necessarily filling up a box score.
Her note that South Carolina is “starting to play their best basketball” heading into March is perhaps the most ominous takeaway from Sunday’s press conference for the rest of the country. From someone who just spent 40 minutes competing against them and another hour watching film, Coach Yo’s assessment is a warning worth heeding.
The Bottom Line
Yolett McPhee-McCuin walked into Sunday’s press conference carrying a 37-point loss and walked out having delivered one of the most insightful, honest, and strategically layered post-game analyses of the entire college basketball season. She credited South Carolina without diminishing Ole Miss. She diagnosed the McMahon problem without making excuses. She recognized Okot’s evolution with the frankness of a coach who respects talent wherever she finds it. And she delivered, with quiet but unmistakable conviction, a promise to anyone watching.
Ole Miss is coming in March. And if Coach Yo’s track record, her roster’s resilience, and the historical precedent she so deliberately invoked mean anything at all — nobody in the bracket should be looking forward to seeing the Rebels’ name on the other side of the draw.
