Mississippi State head basketball coach Rick Stansbury said that while the team isn’t where he wants it to be yet, Tuesday’s win helped to put it on the right track.Junior point guard Jamont Gordon scored 20 points and had seven assists to lead the Bulldogs in a 100-69 rout of the Oklahoma City University Stars in Mississippi State’s final exhibition game before the official start of the 2007 season.
Gordon was joined in the double-digit scoring category by fellow starters Jarvis Varnado and Ben Hansbrough, who both scored 16 points, and Barry Stewart, who raked in 13 points.
The offensive onslaught was a much needed one for the Bulldogs, who did not find their rhythm until late in the game during their contest against the University of the Cumberlands, shooting only 43 percent in that game and 19 percent from behind the three-point arc.
But in Tuesday’s game, the Bulldogs shot 52 percent from the field and 44 percent in three-point territory. On the other hand, the team was only 11-for-20 from the free-throw line, which was a number Stansbury said he was not pleased with.
“We have shot the ball consistently all fall, and we have shot from the free throw line consistently all fall except for the last two games,” he said. “We didn’t have a good free-throw percentage tonight, but at least tonight we made the three-pointers.”
The three-point shots proved to be a crucial part of the game for the Bulldogs.
Hansbrough made two three-pointers during the 10-1 run at the end of the first half, which opened up a two-point lead into a nine- point lead as the teams headed to the locker rooms for halftime.
Hansbrough credits the opportunities for those three-pointers to solid transitions from the defensive side of the court to the offensive side, which was an advantage he said helped the team throughout the game.
“I felt like our transitions were really good tonight,” Hansbrough said. “We were good at finding open people and making those extra passes.”
Though the transitions led to more scoring opportunities and overall points in the game, there are still some areas Stansbury wants his team to improve in.
One of the areas he is most concerned about is rebounding.
The Bulldogs led the Stars in rebounding by an eight-rebound margin, but Stansbury said he was not happy with the effort displayed by his players, especially with offensive rebounding.
“We’re not even close to where we need to be,” he said. “If there’s one thing that we have to get better at, it is rebounding the basketball. There will be an offensive rebound somewhere along the way that could cost us a win, so that’s an area we are going to work on.”
Senior frontcourt player Charles Rhodes, who scored five points and swatted three shots in the game, said he realizes the team needs to improve its rebounding skills and thinks they will get better as the season progresses.
“The aggressive rebounding skill is something we have, but we just haven’t displayed it yet,” Rhodes said. “But we’re going to find it and have it for the first game.”
Stansbury credited his players who came off the bench, specifically redshirt freshman Phil Turner, junior transfer Brian Johnson and true freshman Elgin Bailey, for having a positive impact in Tuesday’s game.
“I think we had some improvement from our bench players tonight,” Stansbury said. “Obviously all of those guys have to keep getting better, we just need those guys off the bench to play solid for us.”
The Bulldogs will begin the season with a non-conference game Saturday at 4:30 p.m. against the Bulldogs of Louisiana Tech University.