STARKVILLE — It was barely thirty minutes after the end of a months-long season, and Mississippi State men’s basketball coach Ben Howland was already talking — excitedly so — about the next one.
Therein lies the anticipation for the postseason, which MSU (15-15, 6-12 Southeastern Conference) begins in the opening round of the SEC Tournament Wednesday in Nashville.
“We’re real excited to start playing in a new season now,” Howland said. “We know the next game we lose, it’s over. We have to have everything on the line in terms of our effort, our intensity, our preparation.”
MSU’s new season begins with a very familiar opponent: LSU, forcing the Bulldogs to face the Tigers twice in a span of five days. MSU finished its regular season with an 88-76 win over LSU on Saturday.
“This will be a much more difficult game with LSU at a neutral site, on a court our guys aren’t familiar with,” Howland said. “I understand that very clearly, so hopefully we can have a good game.
“It’s difficult. It’s a whole new season for them, too. They’re very talented and they can really score the basketball.”
The games against the same opponent in such close proximity give MSU a unique challenge in terms of game planning and a challenge it has not had this season: the closest MSU has come to this was its two games against Tennessee separated by 15 days and its two games against South Carolina separated by 17.
“The good thing is, by this time you’ve played 30 games in the year, so you have some tendencies and things and you have a baseline of who you are as a team,” LSU coach Johnny Jones said after Saturday’s game. “Obviously there are some thing you’d like to tweak, to make them work and be productive, and there are some things you may be able to take away from an opponent that may have hurt you last time.”
LSU’s primary focus will likely being on the defensive end, having allowed MSU to score 95 and 88 points in its two meetings, two of the just eight times MSU has done so in regulation this season.
Howland noticed one of those tweaks in the Saturday matchup that he plans to have answer for before Wednesday.
“They showed a different zone that they haven’t shown before tonight, a 1-2-2,” Howland said, “so we’ll prepare better for that and try to make some good adjustments with our defense.”
What is known is MSU’s starting lineup: Howland said after Saturday’s win that he would stick with Saturday’s starting lineup of I.J. Ready, Quinndary Weatherspoon, Mario Kegler, Schnider Herard and Aric Holman. It was the first time in weeks Howland had started Herard and Holman together, but the result was as anticipated: outrebounding LSU 39-32, scoring 52 points in the paint and using 12 offensive rebounds to generate 20 second-chance points.
“Early on, they set the tone. They got some touches in the paint and got some post buckets, as well,” Jones said. “If they can get a matchup they like inside, they’re going to go with it and they got us on some backdoor cuts in the first half, as well. A lot of that is attributed to the guard play, not just the post guys, but the post guys were effective early and they were in the first game when we played them at home.”
The winner of the MSU-LSU will face fifth-seeded Alabama in the second round, and the winner of that game will face fourth-seeded South Carolina in the quarterfinals. Therefore, for MSU to get to the semifinals, it will have to beat both Alabama and South Carolina, teams that swept their respective regular season series with MSU.
However, both teams enter the conference tournament scuffling: Alabama lost three of its last four and South Carolina lost four of the six games it’s played since beating MSU on Feb. 11.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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