Three-pointers reigned supreme in the Humphrey Coliseum on Saturday night. Mississippi State guards Barry Stewart and Jamont Gordon combined to score seven of them during a furious rally in the last seven minutes of the game to whittle what was once a 17-point lead to only two points with 43 seconds remaining.But a traveling call on freshman Riley Benock gave the ball back to Tennessee with 17 seconds left in the contest, ultimately giving way to a 76-71 loss to the No. 7 Volunteers (19-2, 6-1 SEC), which marked the second consecutive loss for Mississippi State (14-7, 5-2 SEC).
“He turned down a shot right there that I thought he had,” Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury said of Benock’s possession. “It wasn’t just a turn-down, it was a turnover. I think that’s the worst part.”
With the score at 73-71 after the turnover, Tennessee senior guard Jordan Howell was fouled and made only one of his ensuing free throws.
Charles Rhodes, who scored 15 points and had 10 rebounds in the game, collected the rebound and passed the ball to Gordon. Gordon attempted a 3-pointer to tie the game, but the shot clanged off the back of the rim and proved to be the final chance for the Bulldogs.
“When the team is down by three with no timeouts and he had already made a couple, I think Jamont’s going to jump up,” Stansbury said. “If you want one guy to jump up and shoot it, he’s the one guy. And he’s not afraid to jump up and shoot it.”
Yet despite the fact that the game came down to the last couple of possessions, Stansbury was quick to note that the blame should not rest on Gordon’s missed 3-pointer or Benock’s turnover.
“The game didn’t come down to one possession,” the tenth-year Bulldogs head coach said. “That one possession may get magnified a little bit, but there are a lot of other possessions in that other 39 minutes and 45 seconds.”
Gordon ended the game with 17 points, with all of them coming from either behind the 3-point line or the free-throw line. He started the game with a 3-pointer on the team’s opening possession, but he ended the first half with only four points.
The entire opening period was almost a contradiction to the kind of statistics and game play that the Bulldogs had come to expect.
Tennessee shot 43.8 percent from the field against the SEC’s leading field-goal percentage defense during the first half, including 50 percent from behind the 3-point arc. Senior guard Chris Lofton, who finished the game with 20 points, connected on three of his team-leading four 3-pointers during the first half.
The Volunteers also out-rebounded the Bulldogs 20-15 in the first half, and the rebounding advantage did not stop there for the visiting Volunteers. They gathered 10 more rebounds than the Bulldogs, and those rebounds led to 18 second-chance points for Tennessee.
Sophomore center Jarvis Varnado credited the additional rebounds to Tennessee’s 3-point shooting.
“When they shoot the 3-pointer, they get long offensive rebounds,” Varnado said. “Usually most teams shoot the ball in the paint, and me and Charles [Rhodes] can get to the ball and rebound. Those long rebounds were [the difference].”
The rebounding advantage had given Tennessee a 36-27 lead at halftime, and the Volunteers stretched that lead out to as many as 17 mid-way through the second half before the Bulldogs stormed back.
It was then that Stewart, who had a game-high 21 points, drained a trifecta of 3-pointers against the school from his home state and gave the team some momentum to come close to regaining the lead, which they last had at 11 minutes and 27 seconds remaining in the first half.
“We just started too late,” Rhodes said. “If we would have done it for the whole 40 minutes, it would have been a different outcome. But that’s just how things go.