Mississippi State had been in the situation before. They knew the drill. Down late in the game, it had become customary for the Bulldogs to go on a late run and win.
They did it at Santa Clara. They did it at Mississippi. They did it at South Carolina. Saturday evening against Alabama, however, they waited too long to make their run. The Crimson Tide kept the lead until the final buzzer for the 77-73 upset in front of 10,437 stunned Bulldog fans at Humphrey Coliseum.
“One thing this team has been able to do all year long is make spurts, offensively and defensively,” said Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury.
“Tonight we never had either one of those spurts. We kept waiting for them but they never happened.”
Cold outside shooting kept MSU (21-2, 10-2 SEC) from spurting on the offensive end while the play of Kennedy Winston and Emmett Thomas kept the Bulldogs from making defensive stops.
Winston had his best game of the year, scoring 31 points and collecting 11 rebounds while Thomas chipped in 16 for the Tide (13-10, 5-7 SEC), including four three-pointers. The Tide shot 50 percent from the field, and 53 percent from behind the three-point arc.
“Kennedy Winston pretty much put the game on his shoulders and just took it over,” Mississippi State guard Timmy Bowers said. “He was hitting everything out there, contested or uncontested. We just didn’t have an answer for it.”
“On the road, you’ve got to keep scoring and making baskets,” said Alabama coach Mark Gottfried. “It’s hard to shut out the home team for four or five consecutive minutes so we’ve got to keep scoring, and we were able to do that today.”
While Winston and Thomas were lighting it up for the Crimson Tide, Mississippi State struggled from behind the arc, making only six shots in 21 attempts, for a woeful 28.6 percent.
The Bulldogs top three-point threat, Winsome Frazier, never got on track. He made just one trey in eight attempts before fouling out of the game with 3:27 remaining.
“We needed Frazier to make one of those shots that normally he makes,” Stansbury said. “He went 1-8 today and he had all good shots. Those are the things you don’t have any answers for.”
Both teams played sloppy basketball in the first 20 minutes, with Alabama turning the ball over 11 times and the Bulldogs turning it over nine times.
Alabama led for most of the first half before Lawrence Roberts, who finished the game with 23 points, hit one of Mississippi State’s threes to give the Bulldogs a 33-32 lead just before halftime.
Whatever momentum the Bulldogs had going into halftime was snatched away by Alabama. Aided by three consecutive State turnovers, the Tide went on a 12-0 run in the first three and a half minutes of the second half on four consecutive three-pointers. Emmett Thomas hit the first two, Earnest Shelton hit the next, and Antoine Pettway finished off the run from the left wing.
By the time State called a timeout to stop the bleeding with 16:35 remaining, the damage had already been done.
“(The first four minutes) was huge for our team,” Gottfried said. “We talked at halftime about how those first few minutes we needed to come out and play well.”
The Bulldogs seemed to steady themselves after the run by Alabama and cut the lead to two points at 60-58 on a Timmy Bowers trey with 3:57 remaining.
However, on Alabama’s ensuing possession, Winston stuck the final dagger in the Bulldogs when he received a pass down low and laid the ball in as he was fouled by Frazier. He made the free throw to convert the three-point-play and dash any comeback hopes by the Bulldogs.
“That’s one of those plays where if you’re going to foul him, take him out,” Bowers said. “Don’t let him get an ‘and one.'”
“They countered us every time,” Roberts added. “We would come down and hit a big shot and they would respond. We didn’t stop them once we made the big shots.”
State made a desperation push in the final minute, scoring 11 points in the final 26 seconds, but Alabama made free throws down the stretch.
Despite falling to an unranked team at home, Frazier tried to spin the loss in a positive light.
“We might have needed this loss to get us back grounded,” Frazier said. “We were already grounded, but a loss always teaches you something so I guess this taught us a lot.”
Stansbury, however, was having none of that logic.
“I don’t think there is a coach in the country that will tell you a loss is good for you,” Stansbury said. “If you ask a coach whether he wants to win or lose, he’s going to take the win most of the time.”