Mississippi State was pushing back at last, putting together a late second-half rally after looking sluggish for more than 30 minutes to start the game.
But even as the Bulldogs started getting some shots to fall, defensive stops were much harder to come by. No. 8 seed MSU pulled within one twice in the last two minutes but could not quite catch No. 9 seed Baylor in a 75-72 loss, falling to 0-3 in the NCAA Tournament under head coach Chris Jans.
Down three in the closing seconds, star sophomore guard Josh Hubbard brought the ball up the floor with everyone in the Lenovo Center expecting him to take the shot. Instead, Hubbard handed the ball off to Claudell Harris Jr., who had a good look from well behind the arc, but the shot missed everything, and the comeback — and the Bulldogs’ season — ended right then and there.
“It’s a play that we put in not that long ago,” Jans said. “It’s the first time we’ve ever run it exactly for this type of scenario where we had enough time to get one look and then a second look. We were dashing out of it and then trying to drag it and then bringing Josh behind the play after he handed the ball off and trying to get a heel-toe 3. Certainly at that point, you just never know how the other team is going to play it, but pretty early you could tell they weren’t going to foul.”
Despite that bad miss in crunch time, shooting was not the issue for MSU (21-13), which shot 51 percent from the floor and a respectable 10-for-28 from 3-point range. Much of that production belonged to Hubbard, who led all scorers with 26 points, but for much of the game, he had very little help offensively.
MSU also struggled with ball security, turning the ball over 14 times. Eight of those turnovers came in a back-and-forth first half that saw six lead changes and then the Bears (20-14) go ahead by five at the break, the largest lead for either team at that point.
“They did great turning us over. They created energy and points off it,” Hubbard said. “We had some bad turnovers in the first half. It was a little better in the second. We still had some silly ones. Those are the ones you wish you could go back and just fix.”
The Bulldogs also had a hard time collecting defensive rebounds even against a smaller Baylor team. The Bears finished with 16 offensive boards, stealing extra possessions in a game where every one mattered. That helped Baylor open up a double-digit lead in the second half before MSU started chipping away.
Harris and Riley Kugel each connected from long range to trim the margin back to five. Hubbard’s 3-pointer made it a two-point game inside the two-minute mark, and Harris drew a foul on a 3-point attempt and converted at the line to cut the Bears’ lead to one. After two Baylor free throws, KeShawn Murphy got a hook shot to fall that again cut the MSU deficit to a single point. Harris finished with 13 points, Kugel added 11 and Murphy had 10.
But the Bears’ scoring was more balanced, led by 19 points from Robert Wright III. Langston Love was effective getting downhill and had 15, while star freshman VJ Edgecombe heated up in the second half and finished with 14. Norchad Omier collected a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds.
“They weren’t really doing anything special. They just played tougher than us,” said fifth-year senior forward Cameron Matthews, who had 10 boards and five assists in his final collegiate game. “They just kind of punked us (today). That’s all it was.”
Matthews, Harris and RJ Melendez are out of eligibility for the Bulldogs, who are still looking for their first NCAA Tournament win since 2008. Jans has led MSU to the tournament in each of his first three seasons in Starkville, but has yet to break through once there.
“Getting to the NCAA Tournament is still a goal for us every single year, and there’s a lot of teams out there that would trade places with us in a heartbeat for what we’ve accomplished this season and the last three combined,” Jans said. “But right now we didn’t finish. We weren’t able to accomplish the goals that we had set for our team this particular year, so it’s disappointing. It hurts.”
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