STARKVILLE — Actions, not talk, dictate success.
So when the Mississippi State University women’s basketball team’s starting five crouched in a defensive stance and slapped the Humphrey Coliseum floor with the palms of their hands 21 seconds into their game Sunday against Auburn University, you had to believe the Lady Bulldogs were prepared to deliver a focused effort.
That focus waned as the first half played out in one of MSU’s poorest halves of basketball this season. Instead of succumbing to the doldrums of that 20-point, 12-turnover effort in the first half, MSU regrouped and showed the fight and maturity it hopes will carry it back to the NCAA tournament.
Led by senior point guard Diamber Johnson’s game-high 27 points, MSU rallied for a 62-57 victory against Auburn before a crowd of 1,088 at Humphrey Coliseum. The victory pushed MSU to 13-6 and into sixth place in the Southeastern Conference with a 3-3 record. That might not sound like much in a 12-team league, but the coaches and media picked the Lady Bulldogs to finish 11th, so progress is being made.
“You have to believe in yourself,” MSU coach Sharon Fanning-Otis said. “They’re beginning to do that. They’re seeing that the teamwork and the energy and the level of play makes a difference in the outcome of the game. You have to expect to win, but you can’t let down. You’re as good as your last game.”
In a season when parity has finally arrived all across the nation, it isn’t out of the realm of possibilities that MSU can realize its dreams of returning to the NCAA tournament. The team will need to take another big step at 7 p.m. Thursday when it plays host to the University of Arkansas (14-5, 3-4), which defeated LSU 72-52 on Sunday. MSU lost to LSU 53-48 on Jan. 5 in Starkville in a game it wishes it could have back.
As much as it would like to re-play the final five minutes of the LSU game, MSU has re-focused on giving relentless effort, taking care of the basketball, and playing as a family.
On Sunday, those pieces came together just in time. Freshman center/forward Martha Alwal had nine points, 10 rebounds, and five blocked shots. Senior forward Ashley Brown, who missed the last game against the University of Mississippi (hand injury), grabbed eight rebounds, including five on the offensive end, in 18 minutes. Freshman Kendra Grant had a career-high 15 points, and senior guard Porsha Porter had nine points, three assists, and five steals.
Individually, none of those players dominated the game. Collectively, they point to a team that better understands how important it is to get contributions from as many players as possible.
In the past five games, MSU has used 13 players four times and 11 players once. Some players have only logged one minute, but Fanning-Otis seems more willing to give individuals a chance to make an impression or to earn playing time. The thinking behind going deeper into the bench is part motivation and part conditioning.
MSU needs its players to be at their freshest so the team can limit its mistakes and be mentally and physically prepared to execute at the highest levels.
Johnson said the team wanted to come out and take a page from the Duke University men’s basketball team and slap the floor. The move signifies a team is ready to take on the challenge and will work hard to bump, to grind, and to fight to stand its ground. MSU didn’t always hold its line, but it held Auburn to 35-percent shooting and forced 22 turnovers. Porter and Johnson (three steals) helped spark the thievery that enabled the Lady Bulldogs to keep the Tigers off balance.
Johnson also carried the load on offense. Coming off a game-high 21 points Thursday in a victory against the University of Mississippi, Johnson went 10 of 17 from the field, including 4 of 7 from 3-point range, in 38 minutes.
Auburn went man-to-man and tried a zone to contain Johnson, but the Pontotoc native scored 17 points in the second half, including eight of her team’s final 11. She also had the assist on Alwal’s basket with 37.5 seconds left that helped seal the deal.
“I can tell. Sometimes she just stares at you and you know she is in her zone and you better move out of the way because she is about to take over,” Grant said of Johnson. “She did what she had to do.”
The maturation of Grant is another piece of the puzzle.
The Richland High School standout has the range to be a threat from 3-point range, but she also is taking small steps toward becoming a more balanced player, as she scored on a pair of drives to the basket that helped stretch the defense.
After the game, Grant showed her maturity as she talked about trying to branch out and be more versatile on offense.
“Normally, all of the teams know I am a 3-point shooter and normally I don’t drive, but today I did,” Grant said. “I shocked myself. I tried to help the team doing stuff I normally don’t do.”
MSU also made sure it didn’t have itself to blame. It had eight assists and committed only four turnovers in the second half in a 53.1-percent shooting effort that helped negate Auburn’s 45-32 rebounding edge.
The assist-to-turnover ratio is crucial because MSU has had only two games this season in which it has had more assists than turnovers. The closer it gets to having an even split or a positive breakdown, the closer MSU will move toward solidifying a spot in the upper half of the SEC.
A move like that would say a lot about how far the program has come after a 13-17 finish last season.
“Even though we were getting killed every game last year, we were still fighting hard, and that is why we were able to finish like we did,” Johnson said of the team’s 5-5 record in the final two months.
“Instead of just talking about mistakes we’re actually fixing them, and trying to fix them.
We understand the game a little more than we did last year, and, of course, we have a lot of new people, but it is surprising me with all of the freshmen.
“There is a lot of stuff we have to get together, but we’re reading the game and working on learning and doing extra stuff outside of practice to fix problems that were big last year and that are hurting us now. It is out whole mind-set. It is something we feel that we want, and we’re doing the little stuff it takes to get there.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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