Tolu Smith admits he needs to cut down and limit turnovers

The Mississippi State men’s basketball squad came up just short in their previous game on the road against the No.16 ranked Auburn Tigers. The Bulldogs kept it close but lost by a final score of 69-63. After the game, Mississippi State star forward Tolu Smith highlighted where things went wrong for his Bulldog squad; in the turnover department. Smith also admits he needs to lead by example by cutting down and limiting his turnovers.

“I would say personally; I gotta do better, especially in the first half limiting turnovers,” said Smith. “In the first half, I feel like we could have had the game at 25-24. But instead, it was a bigger deficit. If we would have had it within one or up one, I think it would have been a better turnout for us, in our favor. Still, give Auburn credit.”

Although Mississippi State had a high number of turnovers, 16, arguably their biggest Achilles heel of the game, was its inability to score from behind the arc. While Auburn was able to go 11 of 25 for 44 percent shooting from deep, Mississippi State was a staggering 0 of 18. If the Bulldogs are to climb their way to the top of the rings in the SEC, then they will need to not only limit their turnovers but have much better shooting nights from behind the three-point line.

Chris Jans shares message to Mississippi State players amid losing stretch

Following an 11-0 start to the season, Mississippi State has since gone 1-5, most recently dropping two straight games on the road versus Georgia and Auburn. There’s no question that the Bulldogs’ conference schedule has given them problems early on, which head coach Chris Jans recently detailed.

“We were confident heading into both of these games on the road, I told them before we left and reminded them a couple times before we tipped that we expected to win this game, talking about the Georgia game Wednesday and then the Auburn game on Saturday, that our goal was to be 2-0 after this trip and we had a good couple of days of preparation for each particular game,” Jans said.

Mississippi State’s two most recent losses were by single-digit scoring margins, and Jans still believes that the makeup of his team makes them capable of securing big wins. They just need to make a few critical plays down the stretch in order to turn their close losses to close wins.