It’s difficult not to see the growth in the Mississippi State women’s basketball team.
A year ago, MSU lost twice to Auburn in the regular season before it defeated Auburn 59-54 in the third round of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament.
This season, MSU overcame injuries to seniors Martha Alwal, Savannah Carter, and Kendra Grant at the beginning of the season to win its first 18 games, including its first three in the Southeastern Conference for the first time.
MSU coach Vic Schaefer admits things have become tougher since his team jumped into league play. Scoring is down, the games are more physical, and teams are installing what other opponents have used against the Bulldogs to try to gain an advantage.
But MSU continues to adjust.
In its last game, a 64-62 victory against Ole Miss on Thursday in Oxford, MSU received 14 points from Alwal, which was a season-high in a SEC game. The Bulldogs also shot 42 percent (21 of 50) from the field, their best percentage in a league game to date. MSU earned that distinction thanks to a more aggressive approach on offense in which it attacked the basket and tried not to settle for perimeter jump shots. Freshman Victoria Vivians led that effort, and even though she was 2 of 13 from the field, the 6-foot-1 freshman from Carthage is taking the lessons she has learned in SEC action and putting them to use.
Schaefer hopes Vivians and No. 18 MSU (20-2, 5-2 SEC) will continue to put those lessons to good use at 8 tonight against Auburn (9-10, 0-6). The SEC Network will broadcast the game live from Auburn Arena.
“For some kids it could be difficult,” Schaefer said when asked what the adjustment has been like for Vivians, who arrived at MSU as the state’s all-time leading scorer with 5,745 points. “Victoria is mature for her age. She understands film doesn’t lie, and she understands statistics don’t lie.”
While Vivians leads the team in scoring (14.0 points per game) and is second on the squad in scoring in the SEC (9.3 ppg.), she is shooting 36.1 percent (103-for-285) from the field, including 30.7 percent (39-for-127) from 3-point range. Her field goal percentage is the lowest of any MSU player who has started a game this season. She also has nearly double the number of shots (149, Breanna Richardson) than the next closest player.
Those statistics are part of the reason Schaefer has encouraged Vivians not to settle for perimeter shots and to use her size and strength to take the ball to the basket, or “create train wrecks” as he is fond of saying. Vivians is second on the team in free throws attempts (84) and is shooting 76.2 percent from the free-throw line.
Schaefer said Vivians isn’t an “excuse-maker” and has worked hard to improve her ballhandling and to attack the gaps in the various zone defenses MSU is seeing from SEC rivals. Still, Schaefer said it is difficult when your top three scorers (Vivians, freshman Morgan William, 10.1 ppg., and Richardson, a sophomore, 8.6 ppg.) are in their first or second year playing in what he likes to call the “biggest, baddest league in the nation.”
“As I told them (Saturday), what I am asking Victoria Vivians, Blair Schaefer, Morgan William, LaKaris Salter, and Kayla Nevitt to do is to go from playing the equivalent of high school baseball and bypassing rookie, Class A, and Class AA baseball and going straight to Class AAA of professional baseball. The next level is the WNBA, and in this league they are playing every night against people who are going to the next level.”
Schaefer said that is a challenge for a junior or senior, let alone a player like Vivians, who didn’t have a 6-4 post player like Alwal to feed it to in high school. But he said Vivians has the physical tools, which he said puts her “one step ahead of the game.” He said she also is aware enough that she has to take that challenge head on because she is in a critical role for the Bulldogs. If she continues to be aggressive, she will open the inside game for players like Alwal, Richardson, and Chinwe Okorie, which, in turn, will open things for her and the other guards on the perimeter.
“You know that kid is going to make it because of her attitude and her work ethic,” Schaefer said. “She is fearless. She is competitor.”
That’s why Schaefer needs Vivians and the Bulldogs to continue to learn their lessons. Against Ole Miss, Vivians had a turnover with 25 seconds remaining and MSU leading 62-60. Two free throws could have helped the Bulldogs seal the deal, but the turnover game the Rebels another chance, which they used to tie the game on a layup by Danielle McCray with 13.9 seconds left. William answered, though, hitting a 16-foot jump shot with three seconds to go to help MSU win an important road game in the league. The victory gives MSU a chance to match the 2001-02 team for a 6-2 start in the SEC, the best in the program’s history.
Schaefer said he would have hated to have seen his team learn a “hard lesson” in defeat at Ole Miss. That’s why he has leaned on seniors like Jerica James, Alwal, Carter, and Grant and encouraged them to help set the tone. He has asked them and their teammates, “Why not us?” He also has asked the Bulldogs what is stopping them from reaching their full potential. Schaefer is asking those questions because he believes this season’s team can do much better than many thought it could in the preseason when it was picked eighth in the SEC preseason poll. For that to happen, though, MSU needs to continue to study and apply what it has learned on the court.
“We may not have been able to win that game a year ago,” Schaefer said of the Ole Miss game. MSU lost in overtime at Ole Miss last season. “We were up five with 3:32 to go and then had some things go against us down the stretch. The crowd got a little pumped up, and last year I am not sure we had anyone on the team who would want to step up and take the game-winning shot. This year, we have four or five people who would want to. That is part of the maturity of our team.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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