By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

Six new head coaches will dot the “Southern Six” landscape when a new prep basketball season tips off Tuesday all across the state of Mississippi.
There are four new mentors on the boy’s side of the court and two new bosses on the girl’s sidelines.

Along the girl’s prep basketball sidelines in the “Southern Six”, the most notable debut among the new head coaches this season comes in Lyman as Sandra Rushing takes over at Harrison Central.
Rushing, a D’Iberville High graduate, comes home to the Mississippi Gulf Coast after an extremely successful collegiate coaching career that included stops at Central Arkansas University, Delta State and the University of Texas El-Paso among others. She stepped away from the head job at UCA at the end of the 2023 season after 11 years at the helm of the Sugar Bears.

Rushing finished with 184 career victories at UCA, the second-most in school history, and she has won 587 games over her stellar 34-year head coaching career. Rushing took the Sugar Bears to the NCAA National Tournament twice in 2016 and 2017 and finished second in the 2018 WBI postseason tournament, falling at home to Yale.
Rushing’s teams won the Southland Conference regular season in 2016 and 2017, putting together a combined 54-9 record during that span. They set the school record with 28 victories in 2015-16.

Rushing played collegiately at Alabama from 1982-1986, where she was a four-time Academic All-SEC selection and holds the Crimson Tide’s career free throw percentage record. She left Tuscaloosa after becoming the all-time assist leader for the Lady Tide. She also led the Southeastern Conference in free throw shooting percentage her senior season.
She capped off a standout career at D’Iberville High by averaging almost 20 points per game as a senior while battling a foot injury and still earning that scholarship to Alabama.

Before landing in Conway, Ark., Rushing coached previously at Delta State, Henderson State, UTEP and Millsaps. At Delta State from 2002-12, Rushing was the league’s Coach of the Year a record-setting six times and was named Coach of the Decade in 2010 while taking the Lady Statesmen to eight NCAA Tournaments, reaching the Final Four in consecutive years in 2008 and 2009.
Both HCHS squads open the season on the road in Hattiesburg Tuesday night.

Also, in Vancleave, longtime Hancock Middle School head coach Ginger Duease has been hired to take over the Lady Bulldogs hoops squad.
Vancleave Athletics Director Dino Lepoma confirmed the news.
“Coach Duease is a go-getter,” Lepoma said. “She has hit the ground running and we are very excited to have her at Vancleave High School.”

Vancleave hosts OLA to begin its new campaign Tuesday night.