OXFORD, Miss. – Ole Miss women’s basketball head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin has continued to shape the 2025-26 roster, announcing the signing of Kaitlin Peterson from UCF, on Saturday.
“Kaitlin is an integral piece to our puzzle this upcoming season,” said McPhee-McCuin. “She is fierce, a competitor, and will make her presence felt immediately in our league! What I love about her the most is her spirit! We are grateful to have her here in Oxford!”
Peterson, a 5-foot-9 guard, spent the past two seasons as a starter with the Knights in Orlando. The Eufaula, Alabama, native began her collegiate career at Indiana, where she spent two seasons. She will join Ole Miss as a graduate student.
At Indiana, Peterson made 27 appearances for the Hoosiers. However, she blossomed into a prolific scorer while at UCF, where she had her best seasons of basketball.
She averaged north of 20 points per game in both seasons with the Knights. She led the Knights in 2024-25 with 21.4 points per game, which is the program’s best season scoring average. That helped her earn All-Big 12 honorable mention honors last season. She also dished out 50 assists and grabbed 56 rebounds. She scored 39 points against Texas Southern last season, the fourth highest single game total by a player in UCF history. Also in that game, she had a career-high seven assists
Peterson needed only two seasons at UCF to eclipse the 1,000-point mark and etch her name into the UCF record book. Her 1,156 points is the fifth-most points scored by a Knight in program history. She’s the only UCF women’s basketball player to score 1,000 points in two seasons.
Much of her scoring prowess came from behind the 3-point line, where she drained 118 in her four-year career. She made 65 as a junior, helping her score 599 points that season.
Peterson’s ballhawk ability will contribute to McPhee-McCuin’s defensive-focused gameplay. She has accumulated at least 50 steals in the past two seasons, with a personal season best 59 as a junior. She scooped up a career-high five steals against TCU on Jan. 14, 2025.
Peterson was a standout player at Eufaula High School, where she was a four-time Alabama Sports Writers Association all-state selection. Peterson scored 2,967 points at Eufaula, scoring an impressive 25 points per game as a senior. She was a 3-star prospect and rated a top 50 guard in the country in the 2021 recruiting class. Other recruiting databases rated her as the No. 41 overall recruit by All Star Girls Report and No. 54 by Prospects Nation.
Shooting 58.4 percent from the field as a senior, Peterson also had 5.7 steals, 4.9 assists and 3.9 rebounds per game as a senior to help guide Eufaula to a 26-4 record. For her efforts, she was named an Alabama All-Star in 2021.
Peterson is the ninth newcomer joining the Rebels next season, alongside transfers Latasha Lattimore, Jayla Murray, Tianna Thompson, Cotie McMahon, Debreasha Powe, Desrae Kyles, Denim DeShields and incoming freshman Lauren Jacobs.
