The Mississippi State University men’s basketball team suffered one of its most lopsided defeats of the season at home Saturday, falling 88-61 to Missouri in a game that was never close or competitive.
The loss, which came just days after a heartbreaking defeat to No. 4 Alabama, left Bulldogs fans reeling and men’s basketball head coach Chris Jans frustrated with his team’s performance.
“We just got beat in every category,” Jans said. “That’s just the bottom line. I told the team since I’ve arrived, our staff has arrived, we played, I don’t know off the top of my head, I’m guessing we’ve played 50-plus games in the Hump. It’s got to be around there. We’ve had some tough nights, and we’ve had some tough losses. We haven’t won every game that we’ve played at home, but I don’t ever remember that feeling that I had this afternoon. I was embarrassed for all of us.”
Mississippi State (16-6, 4-5 SEC) never found its footing, leading for just 59 seconds before Missouri (17-4, 6-2 SEC) seized control. Eight first-half turnovers by the Bulldogs helped fuel a 10-0 Tigers run to close the half, giving Mizzou a 45-31 lead at the break. Any hopes of a comeback were quickly extinguished when Missouri opened the second half on a 17-6 run, extending its advantage to 25 points.
The Bulldogs’ biggest downfall was their inability to defend the perimeter — a glaring weakness all season. Missouri torched Mississippi State from deep, shooting 47% from beyond the arc. Senior guard Caleb Grill led the charge, knocking down six three-pointers — including two from the logo — on his way to a team-high 20 points.
The Tigers shot 55% from the floor overall, while Mississippi State managed just 36.4%. Missouri also controlled the glass, out-rebounding the Bulldogs 39-31, despite MSU attempting twice as many free throws.
Jans offered up his explanation of why his team was not motivated.
“It starts with me. It’s my responsibility to have the pulse and get them ready to go,” Jans said. “Either via game planning or just motored up and motivated. Obviously, we weren’t. In the first couple of possessions of the second half, if you go back and look, we had some guys that got after the ball in a different mindset than they did the whole first half. That’s where I told them, ‘The cat was out of the bag, what were we waiting for? Do you think at 4-4 in the SEC and coming off a tough game against Alabama that we were just going to show up and win because we weren’t playing a top-10 team?’”
The loss was Mississippi State’s second straight at home and its third defeat in the last four games, dropping the Bulldogs to 4-5 in SEC play — tied with Texas for ninth in the conference standings. For a team that had previously only lost to top-10 opponents since November, the magnitude of this loss stung.
Jans offered his apologies to the fan base for having to see the poor performance and play and vowed to keep it from happening again in this fashion.
“I feel awful for our fan base, for the administration, for everybody that loves Bulldog basketball,” Jans said. “It was an awful feeling. And I never want to have it again. We’re going to do what we’ve got to do to make sure that it never happens again.”
Mississippi State will look to rebound on Saturday when it travels to face Georgia at 5 p.m. and will be broadcast on the SEC Network.