Mississippi State freshman Barry Stewart is so calm under pressure, his coach says it’s scary.”Has anyone ever seen him show any emotion?” MSU head coach Rick Stansbury said. “I love his consistency and great work ethic. I just don’t see a freshman wall for him. He has no freshman in him at all.”
Stewart, who had a game-high 22 points and hit two crucial 3-pointers to secure his team’s 87-76 victory over the Auburn Tigers, responded to the situation as you might expect.
He deferred the praise to his teammates.
“We knew with the zone they ran that we were going to get a lot of shots,” Stewart deadpanned. “We just had to make them.”
“I thought the key to that was Jamont [Gordon] and Dietric [Slater]’s ability to split the 1-3-1 and make those plays,” Stansbury said.
The game tied Stewart’s career high in points, the first time coming on Dec. 11 in State’s road win over the Miami Hurricanes.
He was named SEC Freshman of the Week last week.
Auburn led most of the second half and was ahead 55-53 with just under 12 minutes left when Stewart hit two 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions to give the Bulldogs the lead and eventually the win.
“He’s one of those types that when he puts it up, you assume its going to go in,” Lebo said. “You have to defend him, which opens things up for other people.”
Despite Stewart’s huge effort, Lebo felt the freshman wasn’t the deciding factor in his team’s faltering down the stretch.
“When you look at the stats,” Lebo said, “the difference in the game was them getting to the line and hitting either foul shots.”
MSU was 22 of 26 from the free-throw line, their highest percentage of the season.
Sophomore Reginald Delk added 20 points on 8-of-14 shooting.
Slater and junior forward Charles Rhodes both finished with 13 points.
MSU had nine turnovers and shot 34 percent in a sloppy first half.
They entered halftime down 37-31.
“The first half, we played like we’d been off,” Stansbury said. “We really felt like at half time that if we were going to keep getting shots, we were going to make them count.”
Gordon, the team’s scoring leader, shot 33 percent and scored only 11 points in the game.
However, he did chip in a game-high 11 rebounds in the contest, earning him just his third double-double of the season and the seventh of his career.
The win is the seventh in a row for the Bulldogs over the Tigers.
Dating back to last season, it is the sixth straight home SEC game MSU has won by more than 10 points.