With the season-opening formalities out of the way, the Mississippi State Bulldog basketball team will continue its early-season homestand on Saturday with a non-conference game against the University of Tennessee-Martin Skyhawks. The game is slated for a 7 p.m. tip-off at Humphrey Coliseum.
So far this season, the Bulldogs have performed in somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy role in the rebounding category.Head coach Rick Stansbury diagnosed rebounding as a problem area before the season began and said it was one of the team’s main concerns.
“We have concentrated so much on defending and rebounding,” Stansbury said before the start of the season. “We have made progress, but we have got a long way to go in those areas.”
And true to self-fulfilling prophecy form, rebounding has indeed been the Bulldogs’ biggest challenge in the young season.
The Bulldogs outrebounded their preseason exhibition competition, the University of the Cumberland Patriots and the Oklahoma City Stars, by a combined nine-rebound margin. But in the match-up against Oklahoma City, they only notched one more rebound than the Stars.
While the Bulldogs convincingly won both of the preseason games, Stansbury said that the rebounding effort was not as good as it should be.
“It’s not even close [to where it needs to be],” Stansbury said of the rebounding performance after the game against Oklahoma City. “The one thing that we have to get better at is rebounding the basketball.”
The rebounding woes continued in the first game of the season against Louisiana Tech. The Mississippi State squad won the game by 30 points, but Louisiana Tech collected 52 rebounds to Mississippi State’s 46.
Stansbury said he was not impressed with the rebounding display put on by his team in the game, despite the commanding victory.
“I guess you’re supposed to be happy,” Stansbury said. “I’m not as happy as I should be probably because I don’t think we did some things we were supposed to do. I think we played to our competition a little bit when we got that lead.”
And playing to the competition did not bode well with Stansbury.
“You can’t let the score dictate how you play because it’ll affect you in other games coming up soon when that score may not be that way,” the tenth-year Bulldog coach said.
Yet the Bulldogs could not be terribly upset with the authoritative win over Louisiana Tech.
They committed a mere four turnovers in the game, which tied a school record set in 1979 for fewest turnovers in a basketball game.
The Bulldogs will need to maintain their low turnover rate when the University of Tennessee-Martin comes to Humphrey Coliseum for the sixth all-time meeting between the two teams. The Bulldogs own the edge in all-time meetings with a 5-1 record against their Ohio Valley Conference foes.
The visiting Skyhawks began their season last week with a 102-71 loss to No. 3 Memphis and a 66-62 win over Maine.
In the two games, they were led by junior guard Lester Hudson. Hudson, a community college transfer, made his Tennessee-Martin debut in the Memphis game where he scored 35 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in the setback.
Hudson had an equally impressive performance in the win over Maine, where he collected 31 points.
He received Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Week honors for his performances in the two contests.