For Tennessee, home is where the wins are. At home, Tennessee can whip Georgia and Vanderbilt and take Kentucky to overtime.
The road life for the Volunteers is much more difficult. On the road, the Vols can lose to Florida by 38 and South Carolina by 21. It is a pattern that Mississippi State hopes will continue when Tennessee visits Humphrey Coliseum at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Tennessee is coming off back to back heartbreaking losses at home. Last Tuesday they took eighth ranked Kentucky to overtime before falling 69-68 and Sunday night they blew a late lead against sixth ranked Louisville and lost 65-62.
Mississippi State will have to watch out for UT’s leading scorer, guard Scooter McFadgon, who scored 33 points in the loss to Kentucky.
Tennessee would like to forget about their last two road performances and just concentrate on the game at hand.
“We have to mature as a team,” UT coach Buzz Peterson said. “At home we are fine, but when we go on the road we have problems.”
The Volunteers will substitute freely, as they have 10 players on the team who average at least eight minutes per game. Contrasting with that, MSU has only seven players who average more than eight minutes per game. This could lead to Tennessee being slightly fresher than MSU down the stretch and could turn out to be an advantage for the Vols.
Tennessee’s top three players, McFadgon, Brandon Crump, and C.J. Watson all play over 30 minutes per game and average double digits, with McFadgon leading the way with 18.6 points per game.
The Bulldogs are led by their inside/outside duo of Lawrence Roberts and Timmy Bowers. Both are coming off big games against Georgia. Roberts scored 17 points while Bowers scored 15 points and dished out a season-high nine assists. Bowers will need to be on his defensive game to shut down the explosive McFadgon. The matchup between the two of them could be the key in deciding the outcome.