Dillon CaderThe Ole Miss Women’s Basketball team won their fourth straight SEC game against No. 23 Kentucky Wildcats 63-54 in Lexington, Kentucky, on Jan. 23. With the win over a Top-25 team, the Rebels should expect to see themselves ranked in the next AP Poll.
The matchup of the game was between Ole Miss’s Shakira Austin and Kentucky’s Rhyne Howard. The two battled with each other and put on quite the show, scoring nearly half of the game’s total points by themselves.
With WNBA scouts in attendance, both star players scored 24 points. Austin added eight rebounds while Howard was able to come down with 10. The two carried their teams all game, making for one of the most entertaining battles of the year so far.
Early on in the contest, it looked like the Rebels would march into Lexington and run away with the win. The Rebels didn’t allow a Wildcat field goal for the first six minutes of the game and scored 11 points off turnovers, taking an early 13-1 lead.
However, Kentucky answered the Rebels’ hot start with an 8-0 run, and at the end of the first quarter the Rebel lead had shrunk to five. After a back-and-forth second quarter, the Rebels took a 28-25 lead into halftime.
Howard and Austin began to heat up in the second half, trading baskets and making every play they could. Ole Miss clung to a small lead throughout the third quarter and found themselves up 46-42 heading into the fourth.
The two teams traded baskets early on in the fourth quarter as Ole Miss had trouble stretching their lead past four or five. Around the midway point in the final quarter, the Rebels began to pull away. A couple Madison Scott baskets and costly turnovers from Kentucky pushed the Rebel lead to nine with under six minutes left in the game.
The Rebels took their nine point lead and never looked back. They played tough defense and made a number of clutch shots to secure their third straight win.
