It was not pretty, but MSU responded to back-to-back road losses with a 67-51 win over LSU on Saturday.
Jarvis Varnado, who recorded his 11th double-double of the season with 11 points and 10 rebounds, said Saturday’s game was a game the Bulldogs had to win after losses to Alabama and Arkansas.
“Everybody knew this was a big game that we had to win,” Varnado said. “We basically went on the road and let two games slip away from us when we had them won. We were not playing very well as a team.”
The win improved MSU’s SEC record to 4-2, which leaves them second in the SEC West race to Ole Miss. LSU, who won the regular season SEC title last year, is now 0-7 in league play.
MSU had its best defensive effort of the season Saturday, holding LSU to a 34 percent field goal conversion. The Tigers did not have a field goal until forward Tasmin Mitchell hit a jumper with 10:12 left in the first half.
The Bulldogs held LSU to 15 points in the first half and had a 23-15 lead at the break. Junior guard Ravern Johnson was the offensive catalyst for the Bulldogs in the low-scoring first half. Johnson scored 11 of his team-high 15 points in the first half.
The offense picked up for both teams in the second half, but LSU was never able to make a run at the Bulldogs, and trailed by 10 points or more for the majority of the second half.
Head coach Rick Stansbury said that the Bulldogs had to adjust to LSU’s slower, half-court offense.
“We just have to be patient enough and disciplined enough to stay alert and grind,” Stansbury said. “The first half they would just run the clock down to about ten seconds and get the ball to Mitchell on some type of post play. They were struggling to do that and that’s why they didn’t put a lot of points up.”
The only thing the Bulldogs could not do on defense was stop Mitchell. The senior scored 26 points, while the rest of the LSU team combined to score 25. He also had 10 rebounds to give him a double-double.
Stansbury said five different players guarded Mitchell throughout the game, depending on what position he was playing.
“We had five guys that covered him,” Stansbury said. “When he was at the three, Ravern and [Romero] Osby guarded him. Kodi [Augustus] and Phil [Turner] guarded him at the four. Then, he slid to the five and Jarvis got him.”
Stansbury has said he needed more production from his bench ever since SEC play began, and he got that production on Saturday. The Bulldog bench scored 22 points, and three players (Osby, Riley Benock and Turner) contributed more than 15 minutes of playing time each, giving the starters much-needed rest. Turner scored 12 points off the bench, which tied him for second among all Bulldog scorers in the game.
Senior Barry Stewart said the coaching staff did a good job of getting the starters more rest than they usually receive.
“The coaching staff did a tremendous job tonight,” Stewart said. “I felt like we were not as worn down tonight as we usually are after some of our games.”
With four blocks in the game, Varnado crossed two more milestones. He now has 500 career blocks, which leaves him 36 blocks shy of the all-time NCAA blocks record. Also, his second block of the game gave him 200 career blocks in SEC play.
Varnado wasn’t the only one to reach a milestone yesterday. With the win, Stansbury became the 20th coach in SEC history to lead his team to 100 conference wins.
The road has not been kind for MSU, as four of their five losses have come away from The Hump. The Bulldogs will look to continue to build momentum from Saturday’s win when they travel to Nashville to take on Vanderbilt Wednesday.