SEATTLE — Becoming a college basketball contender, the kind of team with enough enduring quality that it regularly competes for national titles, involves a series of incremental steps.
Win a round one year. Maybe a monumental upset garners two wins the next. Plateau for a little while. Then, with luck, an Elite Eight, a Final Four, or even, ahem, a championship.
Mississippi and its enigmatic, bundle-of-positivity coach, Yolett McPhee-McCuin, better known as “Coach Yo,” confronted that reality on Friday.
“The lights got bright,” Coach Yo said of her side after its 72-62 loss to a high-powered Louisville team that put hers in a headlock early on and never let up.