STARKVILLE
Consider the first six games an appetizer.
With only one opponent (Lamar, 41) with a Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) lower than 147, the Mississippi State women’s basketball team has feasted in November. The Bulldogs are averaging 97.5 points per game and have scored 100 or more points in a program-record four-straight games.
No. 6 MSU also is one of four teams (Connecticut, Oregon, and Iowa) in The Associated Press Top 25 to have five players scoring in double figures. Eight others in this week’s poll have four scoring in double digits.
Those numbers likely will begin to change at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday when MSU takes on Little Rock in its second road game of the season. Despite his team’s high-scoring ways, MSU coach Vic Schaefer has cautioned the Bulldogs are going to have one of those knock-down, drag-out affairs he so commonly referred to in his first two seasons at MSU. It could come against old friend Joe Foley in the Jack Stephens Center. Rice scored a season-high 79 points against Little Rock (2-3) on Nov. 17. Texas A&M beat Little Rock 61-40 on Nov. 20. LSU defeated Little Rock 60-45 on Sunday.
If form holds, expect a game like the 58-44 result MSU earned Dec. 13, 2016, in its last trip to Little Rock, Arkansas.
After the game against Little Rock, MSU will play four of its next five games on the road. Four of them will be against teams with RPIs in the top 84 (through games played Sunday). Matchups against No. 10 Texas, No. 22 Marquette, and No. 3 Oregon will be the highlights in a non-conference schedule that will wrap up with a game against Louisiana at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 30, in Starkville. MSU will kick off Southeastern Conference action against Arkansas on 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 3, 2019, in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Schaefer said the 2017-18 team, which won a program-record 37 games, was so good because it could win the low-scoring and the high-scoring affairs. He said it is “still out there” if the 2018-19 team will be able to do the same thing.
But this year’s Bulldogs have shown they might be better in transition than last year’s group. After a 106-41 victory against Furman on Nov. 21, Schaefer suggested as much when he said, “We’re great in transition. This is a good team (in transition), maybe one of our better ones, if not our best. We’re really good in transition. We have people who can spot up on the perimeter and knock down shots and shoot it with confidence, but if teams don’t turn it over 31 times, 26 times, whatever, are we good enough to out-execute people in the half-court and still score?
“The shots we’re getting I think we’re going to get in our half-court stuff, and we’re making shots right now. It is a whole lot easier to play the game when you’re making shots.”
MSU has advanced to back-to-back national title games in large part to its ability to dictate tempo. MSU displayed that ability in the first quarter against Coppin State when the Eagles went 0-for-10 from the field. The Bulldogs didn’t hold an opponent without a field goal in a quarter each of the last two seasons. Coppin State’s 11-for-56 showing from the field (19.6 percent) also eclipsed an opponent’s low mark for field goal shooting percentage last season (22 percent by Louisiana).
“As I told them when we were in the locker room, it’s not about who we are playing, it’s about us playing,” Schaefer said.
That mantra continues to drive the Bulldogs. You can see it’s working on offense, too. Teaira McCowan (18.8 points per game), Anriel Howard (13.2), Andra Espinoza-Hunter (12.6), Chloe Bibby (12.0), and Jordan Danberry (11.2) are leading an offense that is shooting 52.6 percent from the field. That mark is better than the 46.3 percent clip the Bulldogs hit through six games last season. If you go deeper into the numbers, the ability to share the wealth has helped MSU have even more success. Last season, Victoria Vivians took 19.9 percent of MSU’s shots through six games. This season, McCowan (61 field goal attempts) has taken 14.7 percent of the team’s shots. McCowan (75.4 percent field goal percentage), Bibby (52.9), and Danberry (63.0) also are shattering their shooting percentages from last season.
The Bulldogs’ ability to keep Howard (56 shots), Espinoza-Hunter (53), Bibby (51), and Danberry (46) involved increases the likelihood they will be able to keep producing at a high level. It also should encourage senior point guard Jazzmun Holmes and redshirt sophomore guard Myah Taylor to want to get sophomore Bre’Amber Scott, freshmen Jessika Carter and Xaria Wiggins, and everyone else in on the action, too.
As long as Schaefer is coach, MSU should be able to exert its defensive will against the nation’s elite teams. In 2016-17, MSU limited Baylor to two field goals in overtime en route to its victory in the regional final. Last season, MSU held UCLA to two field goals in the second quarter in the regional finals. It then limited Louisville to one field goal in overtime to get back to the national title game. MSU continued its defensive posture in the championship matchup against Notre Dame, holding the Fighting Irish to one field goal in the second quarter.
This season, MSU’s ability to reach those defensive standards and to continue to execute at a high level on offense will determine if it will have a seat at the Final Four feast in April in Tampa, Florida.
Adam Minichino is sports editor of The Dispatch. You can reach him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ctsportseditor.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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