Saturday’s SEC opener between rivals Mississippi State and Ole Miss was a back-and-forth battle, but point guard Dee Bost said he was going to made sure the Bulldogs did not leave Oxford still in search of their first SEC win.
“I had to put the team on my back to change the game, and I did that,” Bost said.
Bost scored 17 of his 25 points in the second half and lead MSU to an upset over nationally ranked Ole Miss by a score of 80 to 75. His 25 points in Saturday’s game tied his career high. MSU’s record improved to 13-3 with the win and Rick Stansbury’s club is now 1-0 in SEC play.
The Bulldogs overcame a nine-point second half deficit and took the lead on a Bost three-pointer with less than seven minutes left in the game. With Jarvis Varnado defending the paint, Ole Miss did not reclaim the lead the rest of the game.
Varnado blocked six shots in the game and altered countless others, something Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy said he was hoping to prevent.
“At the end we thought we could score through him, and as a result he did what he did,” Kennedy said. “He blocked shots, which leads to transition opportunities.”
The senior center and Wooden Award candidate is now 62 blocked shots away from being the all-time leading shot blocker in NCAA history. The current record of 535 is held by former Louisiana-Monroe center Wojciech Mydra.
Saturday’s win came in front of 9,360 fans in Oxford’s Tad Smith Coliseum, which is the second-largest crowd ever for an Ole Miss basketball game, and something Stansbury said he does not underestimate.
“Anytime you go on the road and win in the league, it’s special,” Stansbury said. “I don’t care where you’re at; it’s just not easy to win.”
Sophomore Kodi Augustus had a double-double with 13 points and 12 rebounds, while Varnado was one point shy of a double-double with 12 rebounds and nine points.
Starters Barry Stewart and Ravern Johnson were also in double figures with 11 and 15 points, respectively.
Stewart, a senior, was surprised to see that Ole Miss was the first SEC game on the schedule, but said he was ready for the rivalry game when the time came.
“I saw Ole Miss on the schedule first and I was like, ‘We’ve never played Ole Miss first since I’ve been here,’ home or away,” Stewart said. “As the game got closer with the rivalry, people got excited and I was excited to come in here to get a win.”
The Bulldogs started the game on a 20-9 run, but 11 first half turnovers allowed Ole Miss to enjoy a 42-37 lead at halftime.
MSU eliminated the turnover problems in the second half, and Bost started driving the lane to put the pressure on the Rebel defense.
The game was sealed with a put-back by Augustus on a missed Varnado shot that put State ahead 75-71 with 43 seconds left.
Stansbury said one of the keys to Saturday’s win was the play of his bench, which has been a problem for his team all season. Even though the Bulldog bench only scored seven points (five from Romero Osby and two from Phil Turner), they maintained the pace of the game and gave the starters some valuable rest.
“Here is the key to the game: the amount of minutes my bench was able to get,” Stansbury said. “Doesn’t mean they added a lot, but they maintained. That’s been a struggle for us. We don’t have a lot of depth at the five and the one because of our two injuries [to Elgin Bailey and Twany Beckham].”
Last Wednesday, after poor free throw shooting at the end of the game led to a Bulldog loss to Western Kentucky, Stansbury stressed how free throw shooting would play a large role in the outcome of Saturday’s game. Free throws were indeed a deciding factor in the win over Ole Miss, only this time it was in favor of the Bulldogs.
Ole Miss committed 21 personal fouls, and State took advantage of those opportunities by making 22 of 33 free throws. The Bulldogs made eight of their 11 free throws attempts the last five minutes and 20 seconds of the game to ice the win over the in-state rival Rebels.
Stansbury and the Bulldogs will try to make it two SEC wins in a row and a perfect start to conference play when they take on Arkansas Thursday night at The Hump, where tipoff is set for 6 p.m.