REBELOG: Women's Basketball's Shantell Black 12.03

OleMissSports.com's Rebelogs provide fans with a look inside the life of Ole Miss student-athletes. A junior and starting guard for the women's basketball team, Shantell Black is among the Rebels that will be blogging throughout the 2008-09 season, which continues Thursday at 11 a.m. with the annual School Day game against Southeastern Louisiana at Tad Smith Coliseum.

December 3, 2008

Hello Rebel Fans,

This season is off to a great start and we are so excited about everything that is happening with our team. After starting the year 2-0 by winning the Winthrop Tournament, we accomplished our goal of picking up a road victory against Louisiana-Lafayette before returning home to start a five-game homestand against some pretty tough competition. We are currently 3-0 during the homestand after beating Memphis, Alcorn State and Nicholls State. Right now we are already 6-0 and have started the season much better than we did last year. Last year we didn’t win our sixth game of the season until January, so we are feeling pretty good about where we are right now. However, our work between the lines is far from complete because this is still really only the beginning of what we set out to do.

November has past and December has arrived. The schedule is becoming more and more competitive by the day. We all continue to progress and move forward each day by competing to the best of our ability every day in practice, while holding each other accountable to become better players. We want to be dancing in March this season instead of heading for the beach during spring break like we did last year. In order to make the NCAA Tournament like we set out to do at the beginning of the year, we have to take care of our business each and every game. We all know what we are capable of, and we just have to bring that with us to the court every day.

Our season continues this week with our final two games of our homestand as we face two very good teams in Southeastern Louisiana and Texas. We play Southeastern Louisiana Thursday at 11 a.m. and we are excited about the opportunity to play in front of so many of the students that live in the Oxford area. I always really enjoy the Student Day game because a lot of fans come watch us play and the coliseum is always really loud. I’m really looking forward to a good turnout.

Sunday’s game at 2 p.m. against No. 6 Texas is going to be our biggest challenge of the year so far this season. We are all especially pumped about playing Texas because we have the opportunity to prove to the country that we belong in the Top 25. We know that we can compete with the best teams in the country, and we look forward to the opportunity to facing such a good team inside the Tad Pad. We are really hoping for a big crowd on Sunday because we know how difficult our fans make it for other teams to play against us. It means so much to the entire team when we run out of the tunnel and see our students and fans in the stands supporting us. It is no secret that we feed off the energy that you guys bring, and we want all of you there on Sunday cheering us on. We feel like this could be another special season for Ole Miss basketball and we want all of our fans to be a part of it. We can’t wait to see you guys Sunday in the Tad Pad.

The University of Mississippi Athletics

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