STARKVILLE — Shakeel Moore got a hand on the jump shot from Vanderbilt’s Jason Rivera-Torres, brought the ball in and began to take it the other way. At midcourt, he fired an outlet pass to Cameron Matthews, who drove toward the basket, drew a defender and kicked the ball out to Trey Fort in the left corner, where Fort had plenty of time to set his feet and shoot.
Swish.
The sequence, which gave Mississippi State a 14-point lead late in the first half Saturday, helped the good vibes return to Humphrey Coliseum after the Bulldogs suffered back-to-back losses against Alabama and Kentucky. MSU took care of business against the Southeastern Conference’s worst team, coasting to a 68-55 victory over the Commodores.
“We had a chance to play really well,” Bulldogs head coach Chris Jans said. “For a while, we were really humming on both ends of the floor. We were sharing the basketball, we were playing a style that we’ve been trying to do lately. Trying to play inside out, get a bunch of paint touches, try to get to the line, and we were doing it. The defense was pretty locked in from the jump.”
MSU (13-5, 2-3 SEC) did most of its damage in the interior, forcing the ball inside and letting Tolu Smith and Jimmy Bell Jr. go to work. Smith finished with 25 points on 9-for-12 shooting to go along with 11 rebounds — all of which came in the second half. Bell cleaned up on the boards in the first half, pulling down seven rebounds in just eight minutes of action.
It took the Bulldogs some time to settle down, but they went ahead for good eight minutes into the game on a dunk by Bell. Of MSU’s first 21 points, 18 of them were in the paint, with the other three coming on free throws before Josh Hubbard knocked in a 3-pointer from well outside the arc to cap a 14-0 run. Hubbard hit again from distance just ahead of the halftime buzzer to give the Bulldogs a 36-21 lead.
“The coaching staff and my team did a great job getting me and Jimmy the ball,” Smith said. “We knew there were mismatches down low. I feel like most nights, it’s going to be a mismatch regardless of how big or how tall (the other team is). We put a lot of work in on the low block and on our game in general. The results showed today.”
MSU’s defense was not always crisp, but against an offense that has struggled as much as Vanderbilt’s, the Bulldogs were able to get away with it. The visitors, despite several open looks from the perimeter, finished 5-for-22 from 3-point range. Evan Taylor made three of his five shots from behind the arc, with the rest of his team combining to go 2-for-17.
The Commodores (5-13, 0-5) turned up the defensive pressure in the second half, cutting their deficit as close as 10, but MSU was able to settle down and weather the mini-storm. The Bulldogs hit just six of 21 shots from deep and were 12-for-22 at the free throw line.
Vanderbilt resorted to intentionally fouling Smith down the stretch, but the Bulldogs’ star big man, who missed five of his first seven free throws, was 5-for-6 at the line over the last four minutes as the hosts salted away the win.
“The old me would have just been like, ‘Dang, I’m missing, I’m missing, I’m missing,’” Smith said. “The new me… I had that mentality to just make the next shot. I think the next one is going in.”
D.J. Jeffries made a pair of 3-pointers in the second half and had a plus/minus of +23, easily the best mark on the team. Hubbard rebounded from an ice-cold night at Kentucky on Wednesday and was also in double figures with 11 points.
MSU is back on the road Wednesday night when the Bulldogs take on Florida at the O’Connell Center. The Gators defeated MSU by two points last season in Starkville, but the Bulldogs edged Florida by one in overtime in the SEC Tournament.
“We weren’t real happy with our last two defensive outings, not just the raw number of points we were giving up but our breakdowns,” Jans said. “If we’re going to lose, fine, but it can’t be because our defense isn’t up to snuff and it can’t be because we’re not rebounding at a high level, because that’s how this team is constructed. … We have to have that each and every night for us to be successful.”
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