STARKVILLE — The Hump wasn’t quite sold out as advertised, but it was rocking at the 7:58 mark of the first half on Tuesday.
The Bulldogs were in front 29-15 against No. 18 Alabama, allowing just five makes from the visitors while getting seven different Bulldogs involved in the scoring. A three-pointer from Jayden Epps just before the media timeout had a full student section in full voice, giving the impression that the Tide were in for a long night.
That could not have been further from the truth.
The Tide responded with a 21-5 run over the final few minutes of the half to take a 36-34 lead, and then proceeded to match their first half tally in just under 10 minutes of play out of the halftime break, leading by as much as 22 in an eventual 97-82 win.
“We punched them pretty good at the start of the game,” MSU guard Josh Hubbard said after the game. The leading scorer for the Bulldogs managed just five points from 1-7 shooting in the first half, and though he finished with 23, it wasn’t near enough to keep his team alive against the second-half Alabama onslaught.
“We were up 14, they went on a run, and we didn’t respond. After they came back, it was in their favor. (We were) down two at the half, came out, still in their favor. They played a heck of a game, had a good game plan defensively and offensively, so credit to them.”
Hubbard tied a career best with 38 points in a dramatic road win over Texas 10 days ago, and added another 30 in a blowout win over Oklahoma four days later, but those heroics are already a distant memory after back-to-back losses where the Bulldogs started hot and capitulated.
Down just two points at halftime, Hubbard said there was a sense of positivity in the locker room.
“We were staying positive,” he said. “We knew we could compete with them because of how we started, so we leaned on that as confidence to go out there and compete more.”
“They played better and we played worse,” head coach Chris Jans said about the momentum swing. “That’s bluntly what happened. We didn’t capitalize on the great start that we had, the momentum that we built. The crowd, especially the students, were into the game and we couldn’t draw up a better start. It was eerily similar to our last outing, on the road. Got off to a great start, better start this game, and we couldn’t sustain it. Before the half, we relinquished the lead and started playing from behind.”
In the road loss to Kentucky on Sunday, the Bulldogs fell behind much sooner than they did on Tuesday. The shift against Alabama was much more jarring because of the factor that the home crowd appeared to be playing for the Bulldogs, but to Jans, it came down at least in part to the visitors finally getting in gear offensively. After a poor start shooting the ball, the Tide suddenly couldn’t miss.
“There’s no way I thought that would continue,” Jans said of Bama’s slow start. “Knowing their team, and watching the film that we do, didn’t have any delusions that they would continue not making shots. I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what went wrong other than they started making shots, and unfortunately, I think it affects us too much when one end doesn’t go as well as we’d like. It seems we suffer a little bit on the other end and lose some of our pop, our bounce, our attention to detail. That’s what we talked about in the locker room, it felt like that’s happened recently too much, and we’ve got to obviously try to change it.”
The loss comes at the end of a stretch with three games in seven days for the Bulldogs, and a day before the start of the new semester. There isn’t much of a holiday break in basketball, but it’s over now for the team as they resume classes while looking to bounce back with a difficult SEC schedule still ahead. Rivals Ole Miss come to town for a sold-out Saturday night meeting this weekend, followed by a trip to Texas A&M next Wednesday and then a visit from No. 10 Vanderbilt on Jan. 24.
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