Against all odds, Mississippi State had a chance in the last 20 seconds Saturday.
The Bulldogs, despite leading for nearly the entire first half, trailed by as many as nine points in the second half as South Carolina pushed a bigger MSU team around on the offensive glass. But the visitors trimmed the deficit to two in the final minute on a 4-point play from freshman guard Josh Hubbard, and after Ta’lon Cooper missed two free throws and Dashawn Davis pulled down the rebound, the Bulldogs had an opportunity to tie the game or take the lead.
Davis, though, stopped his dribble well outside the 3-point line, and Gamecocks leading scorer Meechie Johnson picked his pocket with seven seconds left, forcing Davis to foul an outstanding free throw shooter. Johnson made both, then hit two more for good measure following another turnover to finish with a game-high 24 points in a 68-62 MSU defeat to open Southeastern Conference play.
“(Johnson) has a combination of things that make him a good offensive player,” Bulldogs head coach Chris Jans said. “He’s got great 3-point percentages and he shoots it with range, and you can’t foul him because he’s an excellent free throw shooter.”
Early on, MSU’s defense flummoxed South Carolina, which scored just three points in the first eight minutes as the Bulldogs (11-3, 0-1 SEC) jumped out to an eight-point lead. MSU was at its best when forcing the ball inside to Jimmy Bell Jr. and Tolu Smith, and the Bulldogs scored more than half of their points in the paint. Josh Gray, the only Gamecocks player taller than Bell and Smith, picked up three fouls in the first half and played just six minutes in the game.
“Jimmy Bell and Tolu Smith are hard-to-guard guys,” Jans said. “We’re always curious going into the games if teams are going to (double-team them). They went back and forth. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. I didn’t think we handled it great throughout the game.”
But South Carolina (13-1, 1-0), which has already exceeded its win total from last season, began to heat up from 3-point range behind Johnson and Myles Stute, who led the SEC in 3-point percentage with Vanderbilt two seasons ago. Stute’s 3-pointer in the final minute of the first half gave the Gamecocks the lead for good, and he went on to score his team’s first 10 points of the second half as well.
The undersized hosts had a 15-8 edge in offensive rebounding, leading to a 16-6 edge in second-chance points. Smith, Cameron Matthews and Shakeel Moore all battled foul trouble — Smith, playing in just his second game of the season, picked up his fourth with 11 minutes remaining before ultimately fouling out with under a minute to go. Matthews and Hubbard also spent time on the bench with two fouls in the first half.
“(The offensive rebounding), to me, was why we lost the game,” Jans said. “The way our team is constructed, we have to be a good rebounding team in order to win, and we weren’t today.”
Still, Smith and Bell helped MSU work its way back. Smith and Hubbard each finished with 13 points and Moore added 10. But the Bulldogs finished just 3-for-13 from behind the arc, their second-worst showing of the season in that regard.
MSU returns home Wednesday to host No. 5 Tennessee, which twice defeated the Bulldogs by double digits last year.
“If we could bottle up how we played the first 15 minutes of the first half, we’d have something going,” Jans said. “It’s hard to do that; it’s easy to say it. It just dissipated. The second half, we just couldn’t quite get it going like we did in the first half.”
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