In an emotional, high stakes regular season finale, Mississippi State played what head coach Rick Stansbury called the worst basketball the team has played all year.
Tennessee opened the game on a 17-0 run, and went on to a 75-59 win on senior day at The Hump.
The loss means the Bulldogs are now co-champions of the SEC West with Ole Miss, whom they defeated twice this season. The loss also may have ended the Dawgs’ chances of receiving an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, as they were in desperate need of a good RPI win.
Stansbury said he knew it would be a difficult task to come back after falling behind by 17 early on.
“Just absolutely the worst 5-minute stretch that you could ever hope to have or not hope to have, and that’s what it was,” Stansbury said. “And you’re not playing the school of deaf and blind, either. We get down 17 against them, that’s a good basketball team. They took the crowd totally out of it.”
After the rough start to the game, the Bulldogs tried to rally back, but were only able to get the deficit trimmed to single digits one time. With 10:12 left in the game, Romero Osby scored on a layup to cut the Tennessee lead to 53-44, but J.P. Prince scored less than 10 seconds later for the Vols to extend the lead back to 11. The Bulldogs never did get back within single digits as Tennessee cruised the rest of the way for the victory.
Senior Jarvis Varnado, who had 11 points in the game, said the emotions of senior day were not an excuse in the team’s poor start to the game.
“It’s not a factor,” Varnado said. “We still had a game to play. I knew it was gonna be an emotional senior day with my last game here, but I kinda blocked that out. We didn’t come out ready to play, and they hit us in the mouth early.”
One reason for the one-sided score was Tennessee’s dominance in the paint. The Vols scored 48 points in the paint, compared to just 20 for the Bulldogs. This was done with Wayne Chism, Tennessee’s star senior forward, scoring just one point in the game. Guard J.P. Prince led all scorers with 16 points.
After the game, Stansbury said the points in the paint were a huge advantage for Tennessee.
“They killed us. Killed us. Killed us,” Stansbury said. “Their best player on the inside [Chism] scores one point, we did a job on him. It was all those other cats.”
Kodi Augustus led Mississippi State with 15 points, while Varnado and Dee Bost both had 11 points.
Tennesee head coach Bruce Pearl said the Vols’ depth, with five players scoring in double figures, was a huge factor in the win.
“I think our depth was a factor,” Pearl said. “[Mississippi State] just didn’t have the depth to expend the kind of energy you need to knock off a second half rally.”
The game was widely viewed as a ‘must-win’ if the Bulldogs were to get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. After the loss, MSU will likely have to win the SEC Tournament to receive a bid to the big dance, something Stewart said his team is capable of doing.
“It can be done,” Stewart said. “We did four in a row last year, so we know what kind of team we’re capable of being. We’re capable of knocking down shots and bouncing back.”
After the game, there was some jawing back and forth between Chism and suspended MSU forward Renardo Sidney, but neither Stansbury nor Pearl knew what was said.
Stansbury said he was not bothered by the exchange of words.
“Scoreboard does the talking,” Stansbury said. “It’s over, done. They can do all the talking they want. They got the scoreboard.”