STARKVILLE — Ben Howland has seen his Mississippi State men’s basketball team fight to the end of many games.

Each time, Howland felt the Bulldogs needed to dig deep and to find extra motivation to come out on top.

On Tuesday, Quinndary Weatherspoon provided the piece the Bulldogs missed in their first 24 games, hitting a 3-pointer at the buzzer to lift MSU to a 75-74 victory against Vanderbilt at Humphrey Coliseum.

“The never-quit and the never-give-up attitude, it’s nice to see guys rewarded for that,” Howland said. “We’ve done a good job of that, never quitting when we’ve been down with a big deficit and making a lot of comebacks and having opportunities to win games. This was a great win.”

Trailing 74-72 with 27 seconds remaining, I.J. Ready walked the ball up the court and cut into the lane, but he didn’t see any space or any of his teammates open. Ready passed the ball to Malik Newman, who took a 3-pointer from the top of the key with a little more than seven seconds remaining that didn’t hit the rim. The ball deflected to Gavin Ware (18 points), who thought about shooting, but he passed it to Ready. When Ready received the bounce pass, there was less than four seconds remaining.

“I saw my man closing out to me and Q (Weatherspoon) was wide open in the corner,” Ready said. “He was hollering, ‘One more,’ before the ball got to me. I threw it to him. The ball went so slow and it finally dropped.”

Weatherspoon (career-high 24 points) took the bounce pass and didn’t hesitate as 7-foot center Damian Jones (20 points) converged. He said he put a little more arc on the shot than normal, but he said it felt good off his hands and really thought it had a chance of going in. The Bulldogs mobbed Weatherspoon after the shot and celebrated even before the officials reviewed the replay to make sure the shot was released in time and that it was a 3-pointer.

Weatherspoon said he hit a game-winning shot in practice earlier this season.

“That’s No. 1 right now,” Weatherspoon said. “That has to be No. 1. I don’t think I’ve ever hit a game-winner. I think that’s the first one I’ve ever hit.”

Weatherspoon’s shot was MSU’s first buzzer-beating game-winner since Brian Bryant’s jump shot with no time remaining in overtime against South Carolina on Feb. 29, 2012.

The Bulldogs (11-14, 4-9 Southeastern Conference) led only 41 seconds after taking a 2-0 lead. The Commodores (15-11, 7-6) had their way in the first half in building a 41-32 lead. Vanderbilt shot 45.5 percent from the field in the opening half and held MSU to 44.4, but the Commodores made 6 of 15 3-pointers.

Vanderbilt’s largest lead of 17, the largest deficit MSU has overcome this year in a win, came after Jones made a layup and a free throw after being fouled to make it 59-42 with 14 minutes, 12 seconds remaining.

MSU relied on its defense to spark the comeback.

“I credit the defensive stops,” Howland said. “We did a better job in the second half getting stops and getting out and getting transition baskets. That was really important for us to get some big transition baskets off of our stops.”

Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings, who said it was disappointing to lose a game his team controlled for the most part, said his team made poor decisions in the final eight minutes.

“We took bad shots, made bad turnovers, and didn’t get back on defense and gave them layups on transition,” Stallings said.

Trailing 66-54 with a little more than eight minutes remaining, the Bulldogs used an 8-2 run to cut the deficit to 68-62. The biggest play came off a forced turnover, when Travis Daniels wrestled the ball away from the player he was guarding and pushed it ahead to Ready, who made a one-handed bounce pass to Ware for a dunk.

MSU’s Craig Sword, who scored 14 points in 22 minutes, fouled out in the stretch. Howland said Sword’s effort helped lead the comeback.

The Commodores pushed the lead back to 71-62 with 5:50 remaining on a 3-pointer by Wade Baldwin (10 points). Matthew Fisher-Davis scored 17 points in the first half, but Howland let Weatherspoon guard him in the second half and he scored only three more points. Jeff Roberson added 12 points for the Commodores.

MSU used a game-closing 13-3 run to seal the deal.

“We got stops and rebounds and able to get transition points. Easy baskets to chip back to it,” Ready said.

Weatherspoon said it was good to see the hard work pay off, especially after losing nine conference games by an average margin of 6.8 points.

“All the time we came up short we were coming together as a team,” Weatherspoon said. “(Tuesday night) we came together as a team again and things went well. It’s very exciting we got over that hump.”

Follow Dispatch sports writer Ben Wait on Twitter @bcwait

Ben Wait reports on Mississippi State University sports for The Dispatch.