STARKVILLE — With the sting still fresh from a conference-opening loss to Tennessee on Wednesday night, Mississippi State men’s basketball coach Rick Ray was asked about his team’s chances to reverse its fortunes Saturday at Florida.
Ray wasn’t glowing about his team’s prospects at 6 p.m. Saturday at the O’Connell Center.
“You go from facing a Tennessee team that is going to beat you with execution to a Florida team that is a completely different animal athletically,” said Ray, whose Bulldogs (7-7) have lost seven of their past nine games. “They have so many great athletes. They can really get up and down the floor.”
Such is the challenge for a MSU team that was 5-0 in late November. Since then, it has only a win against Jacksonville and a 62-55 victory against Florida State. MSU is averaging 51 points a game in that stretch and has been held to less than 50 three times. The third time came Wednesday night, when MSU had a season-low scoring output in a 61-47 loss. On Saturday, it will visit Florida (8-6, 1-0 SEC) looking to snap a 19-game road losing streak.
“We just have to work harder in practice,” said MSU guard Craig Sword, who had nine points against Tennessee. “It is about getting better with our execution, getting more comfortable in our offense.”
MSU is last in the Southeastern Conference in scoring, 12th in field goal percentage (42.9), and last in 3-point field goal percentage (25.8). Prior to the game against Tennessee, MSU was third in the league in free-throw shooting percentage, but it went 24 of 44 from the foul line in the loss.
“We are just not executing at the level we have to execute at,” Ray said. “We are not good enough in the other phases of the game to make up for that, either.”
In reigning SEC champion Florida, MSU will face an opponent that has lost two of its past three games, including a 65-63 setback to Florida State. Florida opened league play with a 72-68 win at South Carolina to move its SEC winning streak to 23 games. Five of Florida’s six losses have been by less than 10 points, including a two-point loss to Miami, a one-point overtime loss to Georgetown, a six-point loss to Kansas, a four-point loss to reigning national champion Connecticut, and the loss to FSU.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brandon Walker on Twitter @BWonStateBeat
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