Oh what might have been.
What more can really be said about the 2004-2005 Mississippi State basketball season?
It is hard to believe that the team that whipped Stanford and played toe to toe with Duke in the NCAA Tournament was the same team that lost to Auburn by 14 and Alabama by 49.
It made you shake your head and ask, “Why couldn’t they play like that all year?” The answer is injuries, a lack of a team leader and erratic point guard play.
Injuries including Lawrence Roberts’ broken nose, which caused him to miss the first two games of the season and wear an irritating face mask for more than a month.
Winsome Frazier broke a bone in his foot in the second SEC game of the season, causeing him to miss almost two months of action. The Dawgs were 14-2 when Frazier went down to injury, but were only 4-4 without him in the line-up.
The Bulldogs also seemed to lack a true team leader. Last season the unquestioned leader of the Bulldogs was point guard Timmy Bowers.
He led his team by example and his steady play. His leadership and go-to ability in the clutch led Rick Stansbury to call him “one of the best guards to ever play at Mississippi State.”
This year’s team had no such leader. All-American Lawrence Roberts seemed like a logical choice to be the leader, but his soft-spoken nature and personality wasn’t a good fit with the take charge guy that Stansbury needed.
It appeared that Shane Power wanted to try and lead the team, answering questions candidly after tough losses unlike some other Bulldogs, and calling out the team as a whole after the embarrassing road loss to a bad Auburn team.
But for some reason, it seemed as if the team didn’t respond to Power as a leader.
This lack of team leadership really showed up most in road games. At home, with the crowd behind the team, they showed the heart and toughness that they needed to win.
The Dawgs lost only two home games the whole year with one of them being to an Alabama team that they clearly outplayed except for the fact that they couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean.
However, the Bulldogs won only two road games the whole season, at Ole Miss and a two point win at Arkansas.
When they didn’t have the crowd behind them, they just weren’t the same basketball team. This was most evident in the embarrassing 49 point loss at Alabama.
State let the Alabama crowd get in their heads and let the game spiral out of control. The Dawgs just shut it down in the second half on the way to their second-worst loss in school history.
The third thing that kept the Bulldogs from reaching their full potential was erratic point guard play the whole year.
Gary Ervin has a lot of talent. He has a quick first step and can fly down the court. However, after two years, he still hasn’t learned to be a true point guard yet.
He tries to drive the lane to the hole many times when he shouldn’t (see LSU game in Starkville) and most times tries to get to the hoop himself instead of dishing the ball to a teammate (see NCAA tourney loss to Duke).
This led to Stansbury going with back-up Jamall Edmonson in crunch time of a few games, including MSU’s 71-68 nail-biting win over Ole Miss in Starkville.
Ervin really needs to improve his decision making if he wants to help a team that will be breaking in four new starters next year.
But that is next year. This year was this year, and the Bulldogs’ impressive showing in the NCAA Tournament only enhances the shaking of heads and the questions of what might have been if the three major things that went wrong for State had gone right.