STARKVILLE — The slightest advantage can make all the difference in a heavyweight title fight.
Mississippi State women’s basketball coach Vic Schaefer intends to take the lessons from his team’s 64-61 loss to No. 5 South Carolina on Monday night and find ways No. 4 MSU can create those advantages to make more plays to put it on the right side of the ledger.
One way MSU might be able to turn its first loss into a positive is to take some of the load off leading scorer Victoria Vivians, who is averaging 16.9 points per game (18.1 ppg. in SEC play). The junior guard paced MSU with 12 points against South Carolina, but she was 4 of 16 from the field and 2 of 5 from the free-throw line in 29 minutes. The performance dropped her shooting percentage to 39.3 percent from the field (34.6 percent in Southeastern Conference action). If you take away Vivians’ 8-for-14 shooting performance against LSU in the SEC opener, Vivians is shooting 28.4 percent in league play.
Schaefer knows that can’t continue if the Bulldogs (20-1, 6-1 SEC) are going to execute at a high level on offense.
“She has everybody’s attention and she gets everybody’s best defender,” Schaefer said. “We probably need to take a little bit of the strain off of her and have some other people carry the load. She is not shooting the ball extremely well in the league, so to be fair to our team and her I think you have to look at some other ways to do what we do offensively. You can’t just continue to go 30 or 35 percent night in, night out.”
No. 4 MSU will take its first step to get Vivians back on track and to identify other players who can make bigger contributions at 3 p.m. today (SEC Network) when it plays host to Texas A&M (15-5, 5-2) at Humphrey Coliseum.
MSU is coming off a bye Thursday. The team took Tuesday off and used Wednesday as a shooting day. Schaefer said Thursday the Bulldogs could use junior guard Roshunda Johnson as a substitute for Vivians and use both players on the court at the same time. He said both players have “explosive offensive games” that “command your respect,” but he reiterated it is hard to take senior guard Dominique Dillingham off the court because she brings so much to the floor.
“If Dominique gets back to where she was before she had the injury and is able offensively to do some things we want her to do, I think it becomes a situation where you’re going to have a really good defender on the floor most of the nights at all times because everybody has a good wing player, and we all know Dom provides that for us,” Schaefer said.
Johnson and Dillingham appear to have recovered from injuries that kept them out of the lineup earlier in the season. That could be good news for the Bulldogs, who are shooting 45.9 percent as a team, which is the best mark in Schaefer’s five seasons in Starkville. That number slips to 42.2 percent in SEC play. That discrepancy is smaller than at this point last season, when MSU was shooting 40.8 percent from the field in all games and 36.3 percent in SEC action.
Depth is one reason MSU is shooting slightly better. The Bulldogs have 10 players averaging double-digit minutes compared to seven at this point last season. Still, Vivians is in a similar position in that she has taken double the number of shots (333 attempts) than all of her teammates. Senior center Chinwe Okorie (150 attempts) and junior point guard Morgan William (136) are the next closest. Okorie is shooting 58 percent from the field in all games (58.5 percent in the SEC), while William is shooting 48.5 percent in all games (42.6 percent in conference).
Schaefer said he likes the production Okorie (9.6 ppg.) and sophomore center Teaira McCowan (7.6) are providing, as well as the offense William is delivering. He was encouraged to see Dillingham go 3-for-4 from 3-point range as part of a 3-for-8 evening against South Carolina. He also feels Johnson, who had eight points in 14 minutes, played “really well” and is getting back into form.
“We need Ro to get back into form,” Schaefer said. “I think we have got some other options and, to be fair to everyone, I think we need to look at those.”
There is no doubt Schaefer looked closely at all of them when he watched a replay of the game. While pleased with the execution on “some really good half-court stuff,” Schaefer said the tide turned in the third quarter when he said South Carolina came out and “punched” his team. He said the Bulldogs weren’t real focused and had some lapses with some of their key kids. He said the Bulldogs have to make those adjustments and learn and grow from the experience, just like he said they had to do Monday night after the game.
“South Carolina is a really good defensive team. So are we,” Schaefer said. “It was going to be that kind of game. It is going to be one of those knockdown, dragout slugfests. The game got away from us at the start of the third quarter.”
South Carolina hit back-to-back 3-pointers midway through the quarter that helped it take the lead and energized the crowd of 13,120. The Bulldogs weathered the storm and re-took the lead before the Gamecocks re-took the lead entering the fourth quarter.
“After that, it was just a heavyweight title match, just punch, punch, punch, punch” Schaefer said. “I think at the end of the day you had two teams that were left standing but you had a 15-round decision. We put ourself in position to win. We had so many things late that could happen for us, whether it is a layup or a free throw or two wide-open threes. It just didn’t happen for us.”
Depth could be the answer, especially when you consider Okorie and McCowan are the only players averaging double-digit minutes who are shooting better in the SEC than their overall percentage. In fact, Vivians’ -4.7 difference between her shooting percentage in the SEC and overall is the smallest of that group of eight remaining players.
Schaefer said finding the right pieces at the right times will remain his biggest challenge. Against South Carolina, he said he inserted junior guard Blair Schaefer into the game late because of her ability to set screens. The move worked as Schaefer set a screen that freed up redshirt freshman center Zion Campbell for a layup. It was one of two screens set by Schaefer that led to layups. Unfortunately, Schaefer wasn’t able to knock down two open 3-pointers down the stretch that could have helped MSU continue its best start to the season. Coach Schaefer said he will keep mixing and matching other pieces, like senior forward Ketara Chapel, to try to give the Bulldogs the best chance to make another play.
“We have to continue to work with others to help them develop those intangibles (like Blair’s ability to set screens) to add to their game,” Schaefer said. “You can’t be one dimensional.”
NOTES: MSU will honor local heroes today as part of SuperHero Night at the Hump. Military and first responders can get $2 tickets to the game by going to www.hailstate.com/tickets and clicking on the GovX.com link. As with all Bulldog home games, tickets cost $5 for adults. Youth high school age and under get in free. Admission for MSU students also is free with a valid student ID. In honor of real-life superheroes, children are encouraged to dress up as their favorite superheroes. The first 250 Bully’s Kids’ Club members in attendance will receive a free superhero cape. The capes will be given away at Bully’s Kidz Kourt, which will run from 1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. in Mize Pavilion. Parents can sign up their child for Bully’s Kids’ Club in Mize Pavilion or online at www.bullyskidsclub.com and receive a cape while supplies last. … The game also will be broadcast live on WKBB-FM 100.9. Live audio streams also will be available on www.hailstate.com/plus and the TuneIn app.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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