MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — If not for a key injury down the stretch, the Mississippi Rebels might have been hosting the first two rounds of the women's NCAA Tournament in friendly confines.
Instead they will step into Minnesota’s Williams Arena on Sunday as a five seed, visiting the fourth-seeded Golden Gophers with a trip to the Sweet 16 on the line.
Mississippi at least has guard Sira Thienou back on the court. She made her return in the Rebels’ 81-66 first-round
victory over Gonzaga after being sidelined since Feb. 17 with a bone bruise on her left knee.
Thienou had 12 points and a team-high eight rebounds, four blocks and three steals in 20 minutes of action.
“I’m a happy camper, to the point where I was like, I just wanted to bottle her up,” Mississippi coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin said after the victory. “I didn’t even play her anymore after that.”
The Rebels were ranked as high as No. 13 in the AP Top 25 this season, but they went into a bit of a tailspin after losing Thienou during a win over Tennessee. They lost their next four games to end the regular season — though to be fair, the competition included No. 1 seed South Carolina and No. 2 seed LSU.
They steadied themselves with two wins in the Southeastern Conference Tournament, including an 89-78 defeat of then-No. 5 Vanderbilt. Ole Miss ended up ranked 19th in the final pre-tournament poll, one spot behind Minnesota.
Now Thienou is back as the Rebels try to make their second straight run to the Sweet 16.
“What Sira brings is an edge,” McPhee-McCuin said. "She’s the head of our defense because she’s the one who picks up the ball 94 feet. ... So now that we have her back, other people can just kind of go where they're wanting to and do what they need to do a little bit more comfortably, because she covers for them.”
Mississippi has eight players on its roster who average at least 15.0 minutes per game.
“Other people had to step up, and it allowed us to build our bench for times like that,” she said, adding that the team’s depth adds to her preferred style of play.
“We want to pressure and dictate and disrupt for 40 minutes,” she said. “Humanly, you just can’t do that with five people, so you have to have rotations, people that can come in and want to do that.
“It’s also a reason why I only have 12 on the roster. ... Less is more. They all know that they’ll get opportunities to play.”
Minnesota hadn't made the NCAA Tournament since 2018 and hadn't hosted the first two rounds since 2005, meaning no one on the current roster has experienced March Madness as a player. That might have been a factor in the Gophers' slow start in Friday's 75-58 win over UW-Green Bay, a game in which they trailed by 11 in the third quarter before a furious rally on both ends of the court.
“It was nice to have that game where first three quarters didn’t necessarily go our way, but the fourth quarter we kind of found our groove and were able to use the crowd to our advantage,” said junior guard Mara Braun.
The announced crowd of 10,355 was about 4,000 shy of a sellout at Williams Arena, but many players commented that it was the loudest they'd ever heard it in the building affectionately known as “The Barn.”
“It’s been loud before, but it was like, ‘Wow, I actually can’t hear anything,'" senior Amaya Battle said. “I was calling out screen switch and I don’t think anybody heard me. It was a ton of fun. It was nice to have them rally around us.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
