Jerry Stackhouse shares initial impressions of Mississippi State matchup

It hasn’t been the easiest go so far for Vanderbilt through conference play. The Commodores are 0-4 to start the SEC portion of their schedule, and they’ll look to right the ship Saturday against Mississippi State.

It’ll be another tough test for Jerry Stackhouse’s group. Mississippi State has a top-five victory over Tennessee under its belt, but has dropped two straight games to Alabama and Kentucky. Still, the Bulldogs have one of the best players in the league in Tolu Smith, who’s averaging 18.6 points and 7.0 rebounds per game this year.

If there was a word to describe the matchup, Stackhouse had it.

“Physical,” he said. “There’s just no rest for the weary in this league. I mean, Tolu Smith, he’s been dominant in this league for a long time. He knows his strengths. They’re gonna try to pump it in. They got other athletes around the floor. … It’s a good team.

“We’ve got to be ready to play. We got to gotta go down there with the mindset we’ve gone down there and we’ve been able to do it before. We’ve got to try to do it again.”

Vanderbilt enters Saturday’s game with eight losses in its last nine games, with the only victory coming against Alabama A&M during that stretch. The Commodores struggled mightily in the first half against Auburn on Wednesday, trailing the Tigers 41-24 at halftime en route to the 80-65 loss. Auburn shot 46.6% from the field and got a big game from Jaylin Williams, who had 21 points and eight rebounds to lead the charge.

The first-half issues stemmed from a rough shooting performance — Vanderbilt went just 2-for-11 from three-point territory — and foul trouble as Auburn went to the free throw line 11 times. But Jerry Stackhouse said the inability to stop the Tigers’ run was a big reason for the deficit, and it was hard to get the train back on the tracks from there.

“We just were taking shots and then they were able to get in transition. They made some threes in transition,” Stackhouse recalled. “It’s all like I said. It was probably like a 10-minute stretch there where we got looks at the basket. It just didn’t go in for us. We even got fouled on a three-point shot, going to the line, and weren’t able to convert either. So that’s just kind of snowballed from there.”

Vanderbilt and Mississippi State will square off Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET on SEC Network.