STARKVILLE — A win is a win, and Mississippi State men’s basketball is taking those however it can this season.

The Bulldogs, now 6-5, had to come from behind to take down Utah in Salt Lake City over the weekend, and picked up another win against Long Island on Tuesday. Despite the perceived quality of the opponent, it was another battle for MSU. The habit of playing close games didn’t come back to bite them in an 87-83 win, but it took 54 combined points from Josh Hubbard (34) and Jayden Epps (20) to help seal the deal.

The visitors had four players in double-digits, shooting 47% from the floor as a collective and hitting 11-30 from beyond the arc. Jamal Fuller led the way with 18 points and Malachi Davis netted 17.

It took some doing for MSU to stay in the game, as Hubbard posted his best game of the season with six makes from three-point land. The Bulldogs kept getting to the line as well, hitting 23-30 free throws, and were able to hold off the late push with some clean inbounding and conversions on foul attempts.

“They’ve got a swagger to them,” MSU head coach Chris Jans said of LIU. “I thought getting off to a good start was going to be a key factor. Like most teams, when you’re on the road, if it doesn’t go your way it takes away some of that brashness and confidence. It did, but we just weren’t able to hold them down, so give them credit for fighting back and making it a game the rest of the night.”

The Bulldogs have almost no room for error after a difficult nonconference slate, which included losses to San Francisco and New Mexico as well as Power 4 opponents SMU, Kansas State and Iowa State.

The experience of playing in close games is valuable for a team with postseason ambitions, but too many close calls indicate that the Bulldogs will not be dancing in March for a fourth consecutive year.

For the players, there is still positivity in winning. Epps remarked after the loss to San Francisco that the team wasn’t close to the high potential he’s seen since arriving through the transfer portal, and finding a way to pull away against opponents is something they need to learn.

“Just staying locked in for the whole 40 minutes, keeping our foot on the gas,” Epps said when asked what the team needs to do. “We talk about it all the time. We stress it to each other. It goes back to the drawing board, seeing what we’ve got to do when we do have a lead, when we do have a team where we can pull away. We’ve got to keep working on that and stay locked in when we’re in the lead.”

The Bulldogs faced a team that didn’t care about the SEC logos on the floor or on MSU’s jerseys. LIU punished them for complacency, and it’s what Jans was expecting from the visitors.

“The film jumped out at us,” Jans said of LIU. “I mean, they’re 6-4, they’ve got really good players, big guards, a lot of in-between guys. They play aggressively, with a brashness, confidence in them. I told them for 48 hours, ‘Understand what’s walking in the door.’”

“It’s a good team no matter who you play on a given night,” Epps said of the game. “It’s college basketball, any team can step up. We made a few mistakes down the stretch, but we dug it out and we won. We stayed with it, we fought and we won.”

With Memphis coming to town on Saturday for the last nonconference game before Christmas, it was a good test of MSU’s grit and focus after a long trip out west. The Tigers will be a similar challenge, and Jans is looking for his team to overcome another test as they look to figure out who they are going into SEC play.

“I’m concerned about every game we play in, and trying to get better and play better longer and have as good a result as we can, but we’re just going to keep working and grinding and tinkering and developing our players,” Jans said after the contest. “Whatever our potential is for this unit, we’re going to try to get as close to that potential as we can. That’s the job description, and we’ll continue to try to do that.”