Bully Ball: State takes down Tennessee 73-56 to advance to SEC Semifinals

NASHVILLE – Though Mississippi State had handed SEC Champion Tennessee a loss earlier in the season, not many people gave the Bulldogs a chance in the rematch on Friday and they were just fine with that.

The Bulldogs were as good as they’ve been the entire season as they built a lead early in the ball game and never looked back. A halftime lead of 19 points would just about hold as State punched its ticket to the SEC Tournament semifinals for the first time since 2010 with a 73-56 blowout victory over the No. 5 Volunteers.

“Really felt our only chance was to hit them in the mouth. We had to come out and attack ’em, just get our toughness in the game and see if we could rattle them a little bit,” coach Chris Jans said.

“Our plan was super aggressive in everything we were doing defensively and even offensively for that matter. You’ve been doing this long enough that sometimes when you got a game on that court, you’ve got a run, you’ve got a win, you feel really good, they haven’t played in a while, sometimes you get a little rust on your game that way as well. I thought that had something to do with the way the game unfolded, at least from the start.”

Dawgs do their job against Player of the Year

The gameplan couldn’t have been executed much better for the Bulldogs against a team that was carrying both the SEC Player of the Year in Dalton Knecht and the SEC’s Defensive Player of the Year in Zakai Zeigler.

MSU shot 55% (26-of-47) and held the Vols to just 31% (19-of-62) and 8-of-33 from 3-point range. State’s work on Knecht proved to be big as the All-American had just 14 points on 4-of-17 shooting with three turnovers being guarded by DJ Jeffries.

“I felt like we did a great job for 40 minutes,” Jeffries said. “We stayed together from the start. We just dictated. We didn’t allow them to get into they’re stuff. They were just fighting from behind the whole time.”

After holding UT to one of its lowest totals in a half earlier this year with 22 points in the first half in Starkville, State was even better this time around. The Bulldogs jumped out to a 38-19 lead after the first 20 minutes and Knecht scored just five points.

UT (24-8) had two different runs in the second half that State would weather thanks to 3-point makes. The Vols were able to score nine of the first 11 points in the second half to cut the lead down to 12 points and Josh Hubbard would hit a three to start a 7-0 Bulldog run.

After the lead got out to as much as 22 points, UT would use some 3-pointers from Zeigler to cut it to 60-48 with 5 minutes left. Jeffries would nail a huge long ball and then got a transition bucket to push it back out for good.

“We talked about it at halftime. Certainly, talked about it in some of our huddles of trying to get out of this huddle and have the mentality that we were down 10, play with that urgency. They’re not going anywhere. They’re going to punch back,” Jans said.

“We played well enough in the first half that the deficit was a little bit bigger than it was in Starkville. That certainly brought our comfort level to us when they were trying to make their comebacks.”

In yet another game where All-SEC center Tolu Smith was relatively neutralized, others would fill the void. Hubbard had 18 points with 5-of-5 makes from the free throw line as he just missed his seventh-straight game of 20 or more points. Cameron Matthews was dominant with 18 points on 7-of-7 with eight rebounds, three assists and a 4-of-5 day at the line.

Jimmy Bell Jr. gave the Bulldogs 16 really good minutes off the bench with eight points. He was part of a gameplan to dominate in the paint and the Bulldogs did that with a 42-14 advantage inside.

Up Next

The victory gets the Bulldogs to 21-12 on the season and leaves no doubt that they will be selected on Sunday for the NCAA Tournament. Still, the team isn’t interested in leaving Bridgestone Arena and Nashville any time soon.

The mindset is that State can win the whole thing. They will be facing another top 15 team in No. 12 Auburn (25-7) on Saturday at Noon.

“I feel like we can compete with anybody in the country. We all have confidence and pour into each other so much, I think that’s our best attribute,” Hubbard said. “A lot of people look past us or doubt us. Everybody has an opinion, but everybody has a purpose and our purpose is to compete and compete at a high level.”