NASHVILLE, Tenn. — All it took was one.
Mississippi State’s offense was lifeless as could be in the first half of Thursday’s must-win Southeastern Conference Tournament game against LSU. The Bulldogs went nearly eight minutes without a field goal to close the half, and first-team all-SEC center Tolu Smith had not scored a point.
Then Smith finally scored on a dunk six and a half minutes into the second half, and it was as if a collective weight was released from MSU’s shoulders.
Smith’s dunk was part of a 14-2 Bulldogs run that turned a six-point deficit into a six-point lead. With its backs against the wall, No. 9 seed MSU rallied for a desperately-needed 70-60 win over the No. 8 seed Tigers to advance to the quarterfinals and likely secure a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
“Tolu, he’s hard on himself, sometimes to a fault,” MSU head coach Chris Jans said. “A lot of guys out there, players, coaches are like that, and I get it, but during the game, that’s not the time to do that. He had a bunch of teammates and coaches encouraging him to focus and keep playing, and he did. That was a big moment for everybody to just take a sigh of relief.”
The Bulldogs’ only points during that seven-minute, 42-second stretch to end the first half were five free throws by Josh Hubbard, who made just one of five 3-point attempts in the half. As a team, MSU (20-12) was 1-for-10 from deep and got no production whatsoever from Smith and fellow big man Jimmy Bell Jr.
Smith and Bell were a combined 0-for-5 shooting in the half with just one rebound between them, and Cameron Matthews was also held scoreless in the opening 20 minutes, missing all four of his free throws. Entry passes were also a struggle, with Smith struggling to even corral the ball in the post.
“We just knew what we had to do,” Hubbard said. “We ran some different sets in the first half. We couldn’t hold the ball; we had to keep moving.”
The Bulldogs’ defense kept them in the game, forcing 12 first-half turnovers, but MSU could only turn those takeaways into five points. A Matthews layup plus a foul finally ended the field goal drought a minute into the second half, and Dashawn Davis’ corner 3-pointer seconds later suddenly cut the deficit to one.
Defensively, the Bulldogs held LSU’s best healthy player, Jordan Wright, to seven points on 2-for-15 shooting. Trae Hannibal led the Tigers with 18 points, but after a rough first half on the glass, Smith and D.J. Jeffries cleaned things up on the boards and limited LSU’s second-chance opportunities.
“In the first half, we were rushing a little bit,” Jeffries said. “We just settled in, played our half-court offense and we started scoring off their mistakes.”
Hannibal’s drives to the rim helped the Tigers (17-15) close the deficit to a single point with five minutes left, but as he has done so often in his spectacular freshman campaign, Hubbard took over down the stretch. He hit his second 3-pointer of the day on MSU’s next trip down the floor, made a scoop layup on the ensuing Bulldogs possession, then connected again from distance with a hand in his face to bring the margin back up to eight.
Davis also made a big 3-pointer on a kick-out pass from Smith to help MSU pull away, and Smith’s tomahawk dunk on a breakaway with under 90 seconds remaining again made it an eight-point game and forced LSU to start fouling intentionally. After shooting just 29.2 percent in the first half, the Bulldogs made 51.6 percent of their shots after the break.
“It’s a fine line with (Hubbard). He’s still getting comfortable with the size and the speed and the athletes,” Jans said. “Sometimes when he goes in there and the court is set, there’s not a lot of options for him, but today he picked his spots better. There were some driving lanes available to him. And then some of his talent just took over in a couple of those moves where he was banking it off the glass and pivoting around.”
Hubbard led all scorers with 24 points, going 9-for-10 at the foul line, and Davis added 12 points on 4-for-7 shooting. Smith and Jeffries combined for 24 rebounds, 19 of them in the second half.
The win earned MSU a date with top-seeded Tennessee at noon Friday. The Bulldogs defeated the Volunteers in the teams’ only regular-season meeting in Starkville back on Jan. 10.
“I have to give our guys a lot of credit,” Jans said. “We stuck together. We’ve been in this situation, unfortunately, recently, and we haven’t come out of the gates and taken care of business. We made some runs, but we never were able to overtake them and get the upper hand. This time we were able to do that.”
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