The University of Mississippi Athletics
REBELOG: Women's Basketball's Kayla Melson 02.26
2/26/2009 | Women's Basketball
OleMissSports.com's Rebelogs provide fans with a look inside the life of Ole Miss student-athletes. A sophomore guard for the women's basketball team, Kayla Melson is among the Rebels that will be blogging throughout the 2008-09 season.
February 26, 2009
This week the team and I endured lots of hardships and overcame some big obstacles. The hardships we endured centered on our loss last week at Alabama. We felt so embarrassed and ashamed of the performance we put on in that gymnasium.
After that, we knew we had to make a change. Practice the following days was all about focusing and practicing hard like we always do. So we put the Alabama game aside and prepared for the Vanderbilt game. We were prepared to go into that game and play Ole Miss basketball like we are accustomed to. That game we played extremely hard and were completely focused for the entire 40 minutes. game aside and prepared for the Vanderbilt game.
Bianca was playing well for us. At halftime we were down by only three points. Within two minutes into the second half, we found ourselves up by six points. Bianca started the second half by hitting back-to-back-to-back three-pointers. The game went on and we continued to hold our lead .
With 11 seconds left on the clock and the game tied at 69-69, Liz inbounded the ball into Shantell. Shantell found me on the opposite side of the floor, and I raced down the court on instinct and made the biggest shot of my life. I had won the biggest game this year for the Rebels. I was so happy and excited that we had proved to people that we are capable of doing big things.
We had been so close this year to beating some of the best teams in the league, and it felt great to be able to finally get over the hump and beat a nationally-ranked team. We let so many games get away from us this season in the final minutes, but we knew we just couldn't let that happen again, especially at home.
We finish the regular season Sunday at home against LSU at 2 p.m. This is another really big game for us as we make our push towards postseason play. Prior to the game, we will honor our senior center Shawn Goff. She has meant so much to this team over the last four years. We hope everyone will come out and thank Shawn for all she has done and then cheer us on against the Lady Tigers.
Until next time ...
