NEW ORLEANS — One more time, it happened again.
The team which started the February downfall with an upset victory in Starkville pulled the exact same trick to the Mississippi State University men’s basketball team in the first round of the 2012 Southeastern Conference Tournament Thursday night.
For the second time this season, The University of Georgia men’s basketball team, a five-point underdog, outplayed MSU in nearly every way possible in a game the favorites from Starkville desperately needed by all accounts for postseason implications.
A 71-61 loss to Georgia forces MSU (21-11) to now play the waiting game until Sunday when the NCAA tournament brackets are announced to see if they’ll receive its first at-large bid since 2008. The same problems that plagued MSU throughout a five-game losing streak in February and also forced them to survive nail-bitting victories over less than superior competition came to the surface again one more time in front of 10,917 at New Orleans Arena for the evening session of the conference tournament.
“It wasn’t the zone, wasn’t the pressure or anything like that — we didn’t come to play and we missed shots,” MSU freshman guard Rodney Hood said. “We have nobody to blame but ourselves.”
Coming into the contest MSU was 11th in the league in defending the three-point shot and Georgia (15-16) made 7-for-19 from beyond the arc. Georgia’s guard trio of Gerald Robinson, Dustin Ware and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope combined for 49 points.
“If I had to pinpoint (a consistent negative to this season) we haven’t defended the way I want to every possession,” MSU coach Rick Stansbury said. “That hasn’t been constant for us.”
Robinson, a transfer from Tennessee State University, led all scorers with 23 points by slicing through a less-than intense MSU defense.
“It’s exciting, it’s fun, it’s college basketball in March,” Robinson said. “That’s what you live for at this age.”
MSU’s first-team All-SEC duo of Arnett Moultrie and Dee Bost were absent of production for nearly the entire evening as they combined to shoot 6-for-23 for a combined 17 points.
“It’s real disappointing especially on my behalf (since) I played bad,” Bost said. “I could have done more to help us win.”
Moultrie, who refused to talk to reporters afterwards in the locker room, tied for his lowest point total (8 points) of the season and had just seven rebounds in 39 minutes of action. Georgia’s varying zone defenses held MSU’s interior combination of Moultrie and junior center Renardo Sidney to just 11 combined points and four field goals.
“We just didn’t come out to play and we didn’t come to play at all in the second half,” Sidney said. “We tried to get in that zone but it would just get stolen or their would be a bunch of guys around you.”
Georgia coach Mark Fox, who is 3-1 against MSU in his career, admitted after the game to changing the zone defense as compared to the one that was also effective in Starkville less than a month ago.
“We played a zone in Starkville,” Fox said. “Rick is such a good coach we knew he’d have the answer for us, so we played a completely different one tonight.”
During a television timeout with 7 minutes, 47 seconds left in the first half, Stansbury tried to buy a few minutes of rest for Bost and that window allowed Georgia to go on an instant 7-0 run to turn the momentum permanently the rest of the evening.
“You know the answer to that……that was big,” Stansbury said the importance of Bost being on the bench in the sequence. “It was the first time I subbed him and I was just trying to buy him some minutes. It was a momentum changer. We a couple bad plays in that stretch without Dee that’s for sure.”
MSU’s lack of depth resulted in a tired and out of sync team trying to hang on against a team which had lost seven of eight away from Athens, Ga. — the only win was against this same squad in maroon and white.
Sidney, who had constantly gotten himself in foul trouble throughout the 2011-12 season had as many personal fouls (4) as points Thursday night in just 19 minutes. When he was in the game, he was completely dominated by UGA freshman forward Nemanja Djurisic for his first double-double effort of his college basketball career. The 6-foot-8 forward from Montenegro got 11 points and 11 rebounds by beating every MSU player to loosed balls and being force in the paint.
“I thought his effort on the glass was critical to the game,” Fox said.
The only player who allowed MSU fans to think a late comeback was possible was sophomore guard Jalen Steele as the Knoxville, Tenn., native sank 4-of-8 shots and made 3-of-6 perimeters shots from beyond the three-point arc. Steele led MSU with 19 points in 31 minutes.
As they now wait for the 12-person NCAA tournament selection committee to evaluate them in a hotel conference room in Indianapolis, Ind., the lasting memory could be of six losses in its last eight games.
“We didn’t close out,” Stansbury said. “Made a run (and) didn’t finish it.”
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