OXFORD — After further review, it’s still incredibly difficult to win Southeastern Conference road games.
That’s at least true for the Mississippi State University men’s basketball team.
For the first time in four years, MSU players walked away from Tad Smith Coliseum with a sour look on their face after playing the University of Mississippi.
Ole Miss’ inside duo of Reginald Buckner and Terrance Henry matched the more highly acclaimed frontcourt of Arnett Moultrie and Renardo Sidney for most of a 75-68 victory against the No. 18 Bulldogs on Wednesday night.
“Anywhere you go on the road it’s difficult,” MSU coach Rick Stansbury said. “It’s never easy up here because it’s normally a tough team and a great atmosphere. They had them both going tonight.”
The Rebels (12-6, 2-2 SEC) frustrated Moultrie, a finalist for the John Wooden Award, as the junior played all but four minutes of the first half but managed just two shots and two points. Despite getting 10 points and 12 rebounds for his 10th double-double of the season, the 6-foot-11 forward had just two offensive rebounds as forward Murphy Holloway forced him to shoot from beyond 10 feet from the basket.
Buckner was the key for Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy securing his first win against MSU since 2009. The junior from Memphis, Tenn., had a career-high 19 points and 15 rebounds and three blocked shots in 37 minutes.
“I thought he was obviously the difference in the game,” Kennedy said. “He gave us a great presence at the basket and rebounded for us. By far Reg’s best overall game of the season when we needed the most.”
As MSU (15-4, 2-2) attempts to maintain hope of contending for a SEC championship and securing a berth in the NCAA tournament, its the inability to earn victories away from Humphrey Coliseum in Starkville that could be a mark against its portfolio this season.
MSU has just one true road win (at Detroit-Mercy on Dec. 17, 2011) this season. Its wins against Texas A&M and Arizona came in neutral-site games at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It also beat Northwestern State in Jackson, lost to Baylor in Dallas, and to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Ark.
“It just comes down to toughness,” MSU freshman guard Rodney Hood said. “We haven’t played our type of basketball on the road. We have to get stops consecutively.”
Hood, who played 30 minutes and fouled out after 30 minutes, had 13 points and four assists. After going 0-for-6 at home against the University of Alabama, the former five-star recruit from Meridian High School was 5-for-10 against a mix of zone defenses.
“I got in a groove and kept shooting,” Hood said. “I wish I hadn’t gotten in foul trouble because I thought I could get any shot I wanted.”
After junior center Renardo Sidney converted a contested layup to pull MSU within 63-60 with 2 minutes, 18 seconds remaining, the Bulldogs missed their next six attempts, which allowed the Rebels to use a 10-2 run to ensure the upset. MSU missed six straight shots, including a tip-in by Moultrie that would’ve kept the deficit within one possession, in that stretch.
“We had three or four empty possessions,” Stansbury said. “When you are fighting for your life on the road, you can’t have empty possessions.”
Sidney, a former McDonald’s All-American, was a rebound away from a double-double with 17 points and nine rebounds in a season-high 29 minutes.
In its first signs of offensive impatience this year, MSU settled for 29 shots from beyond the 3-point arc. It hit only 10, and a large number of the attempts came after no passes or one pass in the possession.
“They played a lot of zone … but that’s a bunch of (3-point) shots,” Stansbury said. “You got to come away with possessions where you’re either getting fouled or something good. We left a couple get away on transition.”
A major reason for MSU’s confusion on offense was Ole Miss used Henry, a 6-foot-9 senior forward, to guard MSU senior point guard Dee Bost in man-to-man sets or at the top of Ole Miss’ zone. Henry’s seven-inch height advantage and his length helped him limit Bost to 4-for-15 shooting from the field. Bost didn’t covert a two-point field goal.
“Two of those (made baskets) were at the end when we’re just hoping the clock runs out,” Kennedy said. “We thought about for a couple of days and we just thought we ask Jarvis (Summers) to do so much for us that chasing Dee around would be too much.”
MSU became the eighth ranked team in the past five days to lose. It will get another chance to win a road game at 6 p.m. Saturday (ESPN2) when it plays at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn. The Commodores have won seven in a row since a rocky start that saw them fall out of the preseason rankings.
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