STARKVILLE — It wouldn’t have been a pretty win, nor an inspiring one, but Mississippi State had Sunday afternoon’s game all but wrapped up, leading Southern by 12 points with six minutes remaining.
But everything that could have gone wrong late for the Bulldogs did, in fact, go wrong. The shooters went cold, turnovers remained an issue, and the Jaguars chipped away. Brandon Davis’ layup with 23 seconds left gave Southern the lead for the first time in the second half, and Tai’reon Joseph blocked freshman Josh Hubbard’s jumper just ahead of the buzzer to send No. 21 MSU to a stunning 60-59 defeat.
“This is going to stay with us all year long. There’s no way around it,” Bulldogs coach Chris Jans said. “We’re going to have to figure out how we move forward as a group, and it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be tough, it’s to challenge the fabric of our program, it’s going to challenge some individuals in our program in terms of staying tight, staying together, believing in what we’re doing individually and collectively.”
When Andrew Taylor found a cutting D.J. Jeffries for a dunk with four and a half minutes left, MSU (6-2) held a 59-48 lead. Slowly but surely, though, the Jaguars (2-6) worked their way back. A pull-up jumper by Jaronn Wilkens, a second-chance 3-point play from Davis and catch-and-shoot 3-pointer from Jordan Johnson cut the Bulldogs’ lead to three, and a steal and fastbreak layup by Joseph made it a one-point game.
Joseph was a thorn in MSU’s side all afternoon, finishing with 27 points on 11-for-21 shooting while playing all 40 minutes. The Bulldogs did a much better job of containing him in the second half, and none of his teammates could get going until the final stretch.
“I felt like we were really stagnant and we were real tentative, on our heels,” said forward Cameron Matthews, who had 12 points and four steals. “It looked like we didn’t know what we were doing.”
MSU’s biggest woe from last season, 3-point shooting, reared its ugly head again — the Bulldogs were just 7-for-26 from behind the arc, and they also matched a season high by committing 17 turnovers. Southern scored 20 points off those turnovers and also had a 13-4 edge in second-chance points.
Still, after an uneven first 20 minutes that saw MSU take a three-point lead into the half, the Bulldogs appeared to stabilize early in the second, and they did so by getting to the rim. MSU scored 16 of its 28 second-half points on either layups or dunks, but the Bulldogs missed their last six shots during the Jaguars’ comeback, and only one of them was in the paint.
“In the end there, we were on our heels,” Jans said. “The changing of the defenses after the press slowed us down. We didn’t have a lot of offensive momentum. We had a hard time breaking them down, we had a hard time getting two guys to guard one and getting a paint touch. When we did, we had multiple opportunities (on) the last few possessions at the rim, and we just couldn’t stick it in the goal.”
Trey Fort, who had started each of MSU’s first seven games, did not play Sunday due to what Jans called a coach’s decision. The Bulldogs did get Andrew Taylor back for the first time since a 12-second stint on Nov. 18 against Washington State, and Taylor knocked down his first two 3-pointers and had a plus/minus of +12, easily the best on the team.
MSU has the full week off before taking on Tulane in a neutral-site game in Atlanta on Saturday.
“I’m responsible for our program and I’m responsible for getting our guys ready to play, and I’ve got to do better,” Jans said. “I’m not happy about some of the decisions that I made, and I’ve got to go through that and learn and grow myself.”
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