The Mississippi State Lady Bulldogs will be looking to carry their momentum into the SEC tournament starting Thursday in Nashville, Tenn. State ended their three game conference skid Sunday with a big win over Florida, and finished in a three-way tie for fourth place in the conference. Due to the tie-breaker, LSU claimed the fourth spot, giving the Bulldogs the number five seed. In the first round of the tournament the Bulldogs will be taking on the 12th seeded Wildcats of Kentucky. The Bulldogs last met Kentucky way back in the first game of conference play. It took a come from behind effort to get the win on the road for the ‘Dawgs 59-54. Both teams committed 21 turnovers in the game, and shot under 40 percent from the field. The two teams have taken different paths from that game however. State finished off the season with an 8-6 conference record, while the Wildcats are just 1-13 in conference, and have lost their last 13 games overall. Both teams are a solid 3-0 on neutral floors.
Even though their record is not impressive, Senior Jennifer Fambrough said the Wildcats couldn’t be overlooked. “Everyone in the SEC is strong from top to bottom, but I feel like if we go in there confident and focused like against Florida we can come out with a big win,” said Fambrough. If the Bulldogs do get past the Wildcats, LSU will be waiting in the second round on Friday.
Mississippi State will enter the tournament as the conference’s second leading team in the scoring department, averaging just over 78 points per game. While scoring is not necessarily a problem, there are other areas the Bulldogs will be working on this week in practice. Junior standout LaToya Thomas said, “We need to improve on our blockouts and just keep working on our team defense. We never slack on anything, so we just need to keep working to improve. This win against Florida gave us a lot of confidence going into the tournament.”
Fambrough agreed the win over Florida was a confidence booster, but also noted areas to improve on. She said, “It was a big win for us and lets us know together that we can beat anybody if we put our minds to it. I think we need to be more patient with the basketball. We made to many mental mistakes and there were to many turnovers that we caused ourselves.”
Head coach Sharon Fanning said she would stress the usual points of the team’s game in practice leading up to the tournament. “We are going to work on the same old stuff: defense, rebounding, shot selection,” she said. “We’ve tried in the last two or three weeks but with Jennifer out we’ve seen some junk defenses. We’re trying to define the things we’ve gone over, but get better at what our system is and try to get the team in the right mindset.”
It would appear that with an 8-6 conference record the Bulldogs should have an NCAA tournament birth, but the team will definitely want to get as far as possible in the SEC tournament to guarantee themselves a spot. State is in the top half of the conference bracket, so if they should happen to advance deep into the tournament, a date with Tennessee could be in the makings. The Volunteers have the number one seed, and could be the semi-final opponent for the Bulldogs should they make it to Saturday.
The game against Kentucky is set for 6 p.m. on Thursday in Nashville’s Gaylord Entertainment Center. The first three rounds of the tournament will be televised on SEC-TV, with the finals on ESPN2.