Facing a 10-point deficit in their Friday night game against the ninth-seeded Oregon Ducks (18-14) in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the eighth-seeded Bulldogs (23-11) relied on some timely 3-point shooting and the play of a motivated Charles Rhodes to take the 76-69 victory.Two days later in the second round, the Mississippi State squad trailed by nine points at the intermission.
Yet again the 3-point shooting was there, as was a motivated Rhodes. But the top-seeded Memphis Tigers (35-1) relied on dominant rebounding to take a 77-74 win at Alltel Arena in Little Rock, ending the Bulldogs’ season.
However, the chance to advance was still there at the end of the game.
Despite trailing by seven points with only 24 seconds remaining, the Bulldogs fouled the Tigers.
They missed four of their ensuing eight free throws and left only a three-point gap with a little more than three seconds remaining.
Jamont Gordon, who scored 21 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in the game, took the ball up the court and heaved up a potential game-tying shot.
The prayer clanged off the left side of the rim and bounced out.
“I said before the basketball game that we’re going to have no regrets and leave everything we have on the floor,” head coach Rick Stansbury said in the post-game press conference. “I think it’s obvious this team fought with heart.”
Despite squaring off against the top-seeded team in the South region of the tournament, the Bulldogs showed that they weren’t intimidated throughout the game.
Mississippi State went down 6-0 in the opening minutes, but the Bulldogs fought back and had a 21-15 lead later in the first half.
But the Tigers, paced by the 17 points by Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose, continually answered back with shots of their own until the end.
Rhodes, playing in what turned out to be his final collegiate game, chimed in with 14 points and 10 rebounds.
Ben Hansbrough collected 19 points, and Jarvis Varnado rounded out the Bulldogs in double figures with 11 points.
Varnado also swatted five shots, tying him with Shaquille O’Neal for the all-time SEC single-season blocked shots record with 157 blocks on the season.
Sunday’s loss to Memphis came on the heels of a first-round, come-from-behind win over the Oregon Ducks on Friday.
That victory was spurred by a career-high 34-point performance by Rhodes, who was fighting to play another game for the Bulldogs.
Mississippi State scored the first two points of the contest on a dunk by Rhodes, but Oregon followed that by going on an 11-2 run in the first five minutes.
Those 11 points were a result of a 3-point shooting display put on by the Ducks.
Oregon was blazing in the first half from behind the arc, sinking seven of its 17 attempts.
And all the while, the Bulldogs couldn’t find that scoring rhythm the Ducks had.
Mississippi State didn’t make a 3-point shot during the entire first half and faced a 10-point deficit at halftime.
Then Barry Stewart interjected with the first 3-pointer of the game for the Mississippi State team then sank two more on his next two tries.
The third three catapulted the Bulldogs within one point of the lead before another Rhodes dunk put them into the lead.
“After the first 3 went down, I think it helped us a lot,” Stewart said after Friday’s game. “[That] gave us a lot of momentum. It gave us a lot of energy tonight.”
Mississippi State briefly went down by one point minutes later, but the Bulldogs then used their defense to clamp down and regain the lead.
The 3-point shots that fell with ease for the Ducks in the first stanza wouldn’t fall in the second one, causing them to go only 2-for-21 behind the arc during that 20-minute stretch.
Meanwhile, the Bulldogs also turned their 3-point percentage around in the second half by going 4-for-7.
“I thought I was going to have to go out there and shoot some treys,” Rhodes said. “But my percentage isn’t good, so I wasn’t going to do that to the team.