Ole Miss women’s basketball hires Jacksonville’s Yolett McPhee-McCuin

YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO.

Yep, Coach Yo is here.

Yolett McPhee-McCuin was announced Wednesday as the head coach of our beloved Ole Miss women’s basketball program. The Lady Rebs have been without a coach since Matt Insell was canned after their elimination in the SEC Tournament.

Athletic Director Ross Bjork referred to the new coach as #CoachYo, so we’re going to roll with it and see if that sticks. Start printing the YO is my Coach stickers imo.

Coach Yo comes to Ole Miss from Jacksonville University — a member of the Atlantic Sun conference. She turned around a struggling program, and she posted just two losing seasons at the helm before guiding them to three straight postseason trips. Clearly, she is more than qualified to be a head coach because not only has she posted a .599 winning percentage at Jacksonville, but she has seen success as the head coach of the Bahamanian women’s national team, winning a Caribbean Basketball Confederations title.

She’s accustomed to adversity and success in adversity according to all our research. She’s the first Bahamanian woman to ever sign a D1 women’s basketball scholarship. the first woman head coach to win a CBC title, has recruited five McDonald’s All-American nominees to play for her team as an assistant at Clemson, and she even posted a 4.0 cumulative GPA on her way to a Master’s degree.

And let’s be really honest here — our women’s basketball team was not very good last season. They were last in the SEC, sported a horrendous 1-15 conference record, were 12-19 overall, and they’ve won only 39 games in the last three seasons. Hell, the Lady Rebs haven’t touched 20 wins since the 2006-2007 season when they won 24 games.

It’s clearly been rebuild after rebuild for this program, and so I can’t in good confidence say this hire will be any different and we won’t be back in the same situation in three years, but all of the signs are there that Coach Yo can compete and turn around programs with little to no tradition of winning.

Take that for what it’s worth.