While America is still in doubt, Dennis Felton knows.
A few minutes after Mississippi State beat his team 71-58, the Georgia coach walked into the press room at Humphrey Coliseum and said what many in the national media have not.
“Mississippi State is certainly a top 10 team,” Felton said. “This is a sign of how useless pre-season polls are.”
Co-captain Timmy Bowers doesn’t care what the national media thinks of his team.
“We don’t really worry about that,” Bowers said. “We just try to take it one game at a time. If the media wants to give us national attention that’s fine, if they don’t, that’s fine.”
In a week that saw the No. 19 Bulldogs defeat LSU in Baton Rouge and Florida in Gainesville, Mississippi State began the game with a 19-0 run that put Georgia (9-7, 1-4 SEC) away early and cruised to the win in front of 9,678 somewhat subdued fans.
The win puts the Bulldogs at 16-1 overall and 5-1 in the Southeastern Conference. Forward Shane Power hopes that the country will now take notice of the team from Starkville.
“Maybe if you guys will write some good stuff about us it will help,” Power said with a chuckle. “I think people crack a smile when they see us win at LSU and Florida because they don’t expect it out of us, but I think we’ve got their attention now.”
Mississippi State sure has Rashad Wright’s attention. Georgia’s leading scorer entered the game averaging almost 15 points, but the Bulldog defense held him to 11 points on three of 14 shooting.
“We just tried to know where he was,” Bowers said. “We tried to contest the shot and limit his touches.
I know he’s a point guard– he’s going to bring it up a lot– but once he gives it up you’ve got to try and deny it back and that’s what we did and we forced him into some tough shots.”
Felton said that the defensive strategy worked with a little help from Wright himself.
“(Wright) had 11 misses,” Felton said. “About half of them were good looks and half were forced. He tried to score over a crowd and he couldn’t.
Lawrence Roberts had another big day for the Bulldogs, scoring 17 points.
Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury said Roberts’ defense and rebounding were the keys to winning the game.
“They (Georgia) had nine offensive rebounds the first half (when Roberts was sidelined for 12 minutes with foul trouble) and got four the second half, and two of those came in the last two minutes,” Stansbury said. “They got eight baskets in the first half and four of those were on offensive putbacks. He was a huge difference for us.”
Bowers, Winsome Frazier and Marcus Campbell also scored in double digits for the Bulldogs, scoring 15, 14 and 12 points respectively.
“He (Campbell) was more productive today,” Stansbury said of his center. “I’ve got to have him be more productive. Thirteen minutes today, 12 points and eight rebounds. That’s pretty positive off the bench.”
Georgia tried to claw its way back into the game after getting behind 19-0 in the first eight minutes but every time they put a run together, Mississippi State answered with one of its own.
Stansbury said that ability could drive it to a championship.
“There’s going to be times where you’re going to have some lulls–that’s just human nature,” Stansbury said. “But the team that’s best able to have shorter lulls or less lulls is the team that’s going to win championships.”
Stansbury said he had no doubts Saturday, despite numerous comeback flurries.
“I don’t panic when a team is coming back on us a little bit and cuts the lead down because I know our team is capable in four trips of spurting back out six, eight or 10 points.”
But until that championship goal is attained, will anyone outside of the Southeast actually pay attention to the Bulldogs?
“We don’t play for media,” Power said. “We play for ourselves and this program and this school.”