Mississippi State University’s women’s basketball team opened the season with a dominant victory over Southeast Missouri University, 88-53. Head coach Vic Schaefer gave the Redhawks credit as they made the game very challenging for the Bulldogs.
“A lot of respect for Southeast Missouri,” Schaefer said. “I thought their kids played extremely hard. Competed extremely hard, and we got off to another extremely sluggish start. It took us 10minutes to get going.”
Offensively, MSU played great in transition as they had 16 fast break points. Schaefer was pleased with how they were able to use the transition game to get going and score points, but was disappointed in their 15 turnovers and defensive play.
Foul calls also defined the game, as 52 fouls were called in total, with 20 of those being MSU’s. Schaefer said he was disappointed with his team, as he felt they committed too many fouls, which lead to three players being in foul trouble with four fouls each.
“Way too many fouls, we just got our hands all over people.” Schaefer said. “We got to clean that up and do a better job defensively.”
The team forced 20 turnovers in the game, which Schaefer was not very thrilled about. However, he was happy with the way Jazzmun Holmes and Myah Taylor ran the point guard position, as they had five and six assists respectively.
“I thought Jazz played well running the point,” Schaefer said. “She had five assists and only one turnover, and Myah had six assists and two turnovers. That is 11/3, which is almost three to one (assist to turnover margin) which is what you want. I thought they did a nice job running our team and scoring.”
Teaira McCowan had a great start as she earned her first double-double of the year within 11 minutes of play. She would finish with 24 points and 17 rebounds. She was three blocks away from a triple-double, something that has not been done at MSU since 2000.
McCowan also missed five free throws in the game, which she said she would fix.
“I’m pretty sure I should have something (goals to make triple-doubles) in there along those lines,” McCowan said. “My free throws, I do not know what happened, but I’m going to start working on fixing those tonight.”
MSU will travel to Virginia Friday to play the University of Virginia. Schaefer said this game will challenge MSU, as they do not have any film on Virginia.
“We will not have anything on them (Virginia) this year,” Schaefer said. “I know they have a couple of really special guards, they have a new coach. I know a little bit of their back ground, both in the league and from coaching in Texas. So we will go off of that and have a good feel going in there.”