After playing four out of five games on the road, the Basketball Bulldogs finally got their chance to play before the friendly fans in Humphrey Coliseum, and they made sure they took advantage of the opportunity.
Thursday night, Rick Stansbury’s club completed a season sweep of Ole Miss by a score of 71-63 in front of a season-high crowd of 9,401. On Saturday, the Bulldogs avoided losing what Stansbury called a “trap” game against Auburn and escaped with an 85-75 victory in overtime.
Those wins put MSU (18-7, 6-4) in a tie for first place in the SEC West with Arkansas. The wins also help strengthen the Bulldogs’ NCAA tournament resume.
Ole Miss is a top-50 RPI team, which makes the season sweep of them look more impressive, while losing a home game to Auburn (RPI rating of 145) would have been devastating to the Bulldogs’ tournament chances.
If it had not been for Dee Bost scoring a career-high 32 points, the Bulldogs would have likely found themselves on the losing end of Saturday’s game with Auburn. Bost was also one rebound shy of a double-double.
Stansbury said he hopes he can see that kind of effort from Bost when the Bulldogs take on Kentucky tonight at 8 in The Hump.
“If I knew what made him do that, I wouldn’t be here,” Stansbury said. “It was very obvious that Dee got in a rhythm when he got going. He attacked with a lot of confidence and made a lot of plays. If I had the answer [to what made him so effective] for sure, I’d bottle it up and pull it back out Tuesday night.”
The seven 3-pointers Bost made were the second highest in MSU history, behind four players who have made eight in a game.
While it was Bost who had the hot hand against Auburn, it was Ravern Johnson who led the way against the Rebels. The junior had 18 points and was 4 for 7 from behind the 3-point line.
After a stretch of games that saw plenty of shooting woes for the Bulldogs, Johnson said it felt good to finally see so many shots going in.
“I felt like my shot was coming back and continuing to get better,” Johnson said. “We can’t do nothing but keep shooting and hope they go in.”
In the Auburn game, the Bulldogs were forced to rally back from a double-digit deficit for the second time this year against a team in the bottom of their division at home.
Against Georgia (last in the SEC East), MSU rallied from a 13-point hole to come back and win the game, and Saturday’s game with Auburn (fifth in the SEC West) played out in a similar fashion.
Midway through the first half, a Tay Waller three put the Tigers up by 14, but the Bulldogs would climb back into the game and eventually win in overtime. The game was a back-and-forth battle with seven ties and 10 lead changes.
It was the Bulldogs’ dominant effort in overtime that set the tone of the win. MSU outscored Auburn 11-1 in the extra session as the Tigers did not make a field goal.
Stansbury said the energy of the crowd is what put the Bulldogs over the hump in overtime.
“With us being the home team, we had a little more energy,” Stansbury said. “We scored the first five before they were able to get on the board and that gave us even a little more energy.”
A key contributor in both of last week’s games was sophomore Romero Osby, who scored nine points against Ole Miss and scored 11 against Auburn, coming off the bench in both games. Stansbury used his 6’8,” 230-pound frame to add size to the Bulldogs lineup. Osby replaced Johnson when he was injured in the second half of the Auburn game, but senior guard Barry Stewart said the team had a lot of confidence in the reserve forward.
“Ro[mero] is physical, he gives you something different than what Ray does,” Stewart said. “He gives you that long ball. They’re two different types of players, but we have confidence in Ro. He’s been playing here at the end the last few games, so we knew what he could do.”
Jarvis Varnado continued his attack on the all-time NCAA block’s record. With four block against Ole Miss, and five against Auburn, the senior is now 17 blocks away from breaking the record. Even MSU head football coach Dan Mullen was seen wearing “SWAT” gear at the Ole Miss game.
The Bulldogs will now turn their attention to Kentucky, the final game of the three-game home stand. Kentucky comes into Starkville ranked third in the country.