On a night where both teams found it difficult to score, Ole Miss (4-3) found a way to win its third straight game 59-53 over the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers (3-2).
“What good teams have to do is figure out a way to win even when you play bad and that’s what we did,” Ole Miss head women’s coach Matt Insell said. “A week ago we were not doing that. Two weeks ago we were not doing that. We would just laid down when things went bad.”
This past weekend, the Lady Rebels took to New York to play Wagner and Stony Brook and defeated both of them handily. Insell credits the recent resurgence from being able to practice in a private gym, given permission by Insell’s best friend Buzz Peterson, called “Terminal 23”.
“I saw a turn in our team there,” he said, “They were in awe when they walked in. It was an ‘awe’ moment for them but they started coming together.”
Insell added that adversity due to the unfavorable conditions of the gym and the tough practices brought this team together for good.
Adversity kicked in when the game started to get going. Neither team shot well in the first half. Ole Miss and Western Kentucky both shot below 30 percent. The Lady Rebels held a 29-23 lead going into the break.
The second half Ole Miss needed the spark of Erika Sisk and Shandricka Sessom to pull away from the Lady Hilltoppers.
Coming out of the halftime break, Sessom scored a quick five points in the first and the lead was out to eight points by a score of 36-28 with 7:08 left in the third quarter. Sessom was limited to foul trouble the rest of the game. She had 18 points on 6-of-11 shooting.
The Lady Hilltoppers got as close to two points three times in the final three minuets of the game. Erika Sisk, an Oxford native, closed down the win by sinking four free throws in the final stretch.
The duo combined to score 34 points on 11-22 shooting while the rest of the team combined for 25 points on 8-of-43 shooting.
It wasn’t all in the final stretch where she made the impact. She rebounded, made plays, and most importantly provided to the team where it needed the most.
“Erika Sisk is a leader of our basketball team,” Insell said. “We haven’t had a leader in this basketball program in my three years here. We just haven’t and I have had to be the leader for the team. Erika Sisk is taking that role over for us and has done an unbelievable job at that. It is a big reason why we are sitting here 4-3 instead of 1-5 or 1-6.”
The team lacked effort and intensity at the beginning of the season that led them to drop three games in a row, but as Head coach Matt Insell pointed out, the leader stepped up for the team.
“Better energy. It starts with me. I guard the ball,” senior point guard Erika Sisk said, “We had a talk and it feeds off of Erika Sisk and A’Queen Hayes so if we have energy, the team has energy. Ever since Murphysboro we’ve been bringing it ever since defensively.”
The renewed defensive energy held Western Kentucky to 53 points on 29.7 percent shooting and forced 18 turnovers.
Bretta Hart pulled down a game high of 18 rebounds.
The Lady Rebels return to action Sunday against Arkansas Pine-Bluff at 2 p.m. CT
