On the shoulders of freshman Victoria Vivians’ 19 points and 10 rebounds, the Mississippi State University women’s basketball team got a 59-48 win over the Auburn Tigers Monday. The team currently finds itself No. 18 best team in the country.
Just like in the last couple of games for the Bulldogs, a second-half surge ended up tipping the scales in the favor of Head Coach Vic Schaefer’s young team. This particular stretch at the beginning of the second half saw the Bulldogs string together a 10-0 run and put any prospects of a Tiger comeback to rest. Senior preseason All-SEC First Team center Martha Alwal, who struggled at the beginning of the season due to injuries, dominated in the paint during the second half. Alwal scored 15 points and grabbed seven rebounds in the half. Alwal’s emergence in the second half helped the Bulldogs gain the advantage on the boards 38-30 and establish their hold in the paint. 
After the game, Schaefer pointed to both Alwal and Vivians as major reasons why the Bulldogs were able to get the tough road victory. 
“Really pleased with Martha’s performance on the boards,” Schaefer said. “Victoria got a double-double, and that is really big for a freshman.”
For Vivians, Monday’s game served as a step in the right direction after she had been unable to find any consistency with her shooting stroke. In her previous four games, she went 10-39 from the field (25 percent) and finished with no points in the double overtime game against LSU. During thistime, her minutes were also reduced, which served as a wake-up call for the freshman.     
Vivians’ finds her roots in Carthage, Mississippi, where a little less than a year ago she was considered one of the most sought after women’s high school athletes in the entire country. She averaged a hefty 33.4 points per game during her high school career. She would soon choose to call MSU home, to the delight of Schaefer and any Bulldog fan who follows the program closely. She headlines a highly coveted freshman class that includes the likes of Morgan William, Kayla Nevitt, Blair Schaefer and LaKaris Salter, who all should play a prominent part in keeping MSU’s women’s basketball at a competitive level for many seasons to come. 
If MSU wants to compete for the SEC title and make some noise in the NCAA Tournament come March, Vivians will need to continue establishing herself as a double-double type of player. Vivians’ ability to rebound is an important part of the reason Schaefer has shown faith to keep her in the starting lineup. Even when the shot is not finding its way through the net, Vivians’ still finds other ways to impact the game on both ends of the court. 
While the Bulldogs picked up the win on the court, the same offensive issues still linger. Monday’s game saw Schaefer’s squad only shoot 36.7 percent from the field and only a very low 17.6 percent from three-point range. Luckily, its defensive prowess allowed it to hold Auburn to 40 percent shooting from the field, which covered up the play of the Tiger’s inconsistent offense. 
Turnovers are another factor Schaefer hopes to see less of in the upcoming weeks. He hinted at how signigicantly turnovers alter the flow of the team’s game.
“I am pleased with how we responded to end the first half (with a 15-2 run) after we were down seven,” Schaefer said. “We are on the road with a young team. You don’t know how they will respond. We just had to stop turning it over. We could defend them on the half court.”
That being said, one player in particular, Isabelle Harrison, has played very well as of late. She was named last week’s SEC player of the week for the second time this season, as she managed to average 15.3 points and 8.7 rebounds in the three games played last week. During those three games, the center owned the paint, grabbing 24 total rebounds while shooting 47 percent from the field. Her play has been a large part of why the Volunteers have remained undefeated in conference play, and if the Bulldogs wish to leave Knoxville as the victors on Sunday, Martha Alwal will need to do her best to contain the streaking Volunteer center. 
Tennessee comes into the game playing defense on a level close to the Bulldogs, as it only allows teams to shoot 36 percent from the field, which is only one percent higher than Mississippi State’s 35 percent. The surprise, however, comes on the offensive end where Tennessee has shot a very similar 41 percent for the entire season, only one percent better than the Bulldogs on the year. If this is any indication of how Sunday’s game might play out on the court, one might expect a low scoring, highly defensive affair in which every possession could be drastic to the overall outcome of the game. 
Sunday’s game begins at 2:00 p.m. in Knoxville, where both teams will be looking to pick up a very big conference win. The game can be seen on the SEC Network.