STARKVILLE — In previewing Saturday’s regular season finale against LSU, Mississippi State men’s basketball coach Ben Howland remarked it felt like, “an eternity,” since MSU’s last meeting with the Tigers.
MSU won that game in Baton Rouge, 95-78; Howland saw LSU as a team bringing an improved bench to Starkville for the rematch.
MSU’s bench was the one with the upper hand Saturday, outscoring LSU’s bench 32-10 in MSU’s 88-76 win.
“That’s something we need every night, for our bench to come out with a lot of energy like that,” sophomore guard Xavian Stapleton said, who led all MSU bench players in tying his career high with 14 points. “It’s real big and really helped us succeed today.”
Freshman guard Lamar Peters scored five points off the bench, as did freshman guard Tyson Carter. Three of Carter’s points came at the halftime buzzer: after a MSU defensive stop, senior point guard I.J. Ready took a couple of dribbles and fired a pass across the halfcourt line to Carter on the left wing. Carter made the lengthy 3-pointer, several feet behind the 3-point line, that gave MSU an 18-point lead at the break.
“Tyson Carter’s shot was huge, that gave us a lot of momentum,” Howland said. “That’s the second time he’s done that for us.”
Freshman guard Eli Wright added eight points off the bench.
Focus in the paint
Howland started freshman forward Schnider Herard and sophomore forward Aric Holman, the team’s two tallest players at 6-foot-10, together on Saturday. It was a break from MSU’s recent games — the two had only started together once in MSU’s last Feb. 11 — but it was a return to the lineup it started in its first meeting with LSU, a 95-78 win. The only change from the first starting lineup was substituting Ready in for Peters.
The move was indicative of MSU’s focus on the interior, which paid off in a big way Saturday.
“We did that at Baton Rouge, we got the ball inside and did a much better job of feeding the post,” Howland said. “This was obviously huge for us to get headed in the right direction now.”
MSU outscored LSU in the paint 52-38 and outrebounded LSU 39-32 and did so while splitting minutes among big men: Holman played 19 and Herard played 18, but E.J. Datcher played 14 off the bench and Kegler played some of his 31 minutes in the post.
The Bulldogs also grabbed 12 offensive rebounds to create 20 second-chance points.
MSU’s size in the starting lineup combined with LSU’s, which also started two players listed at 6-foot-10, made driving to the rim a tricky task. MSU got there with backdoor cuts, using those to get a pair of easy layups for Quinndary Weatherspoon in the first five minutes and some of Ready’s 13 assists.
“They had their rim protector out trying to stay in front of me and stop me from having vision,” Ready said. “They did a great job of cutting when their man was focused on me.”
Late scare
Although MSU turned it over just 11 times in the win, a string of second-half turnovers did bring LSU within range of MSU’s once prohibitive 18-point halftime lead.
“I thought we relaxed a little bit with a lead in the second half, it got a little scarier than it should have with some of those turnovers,” Howland said.
The closest LSU got was a 10-point deficit with roughly five minutes left to play: MSU met the occasion with a 7-0 run, starting with Weatherspoon scoring the game’s next four points and Holman putting an exclamation point on the run with a three-point play.
At long last
The win snapped MSU’s seven-game losing streak, one that Howland said might be the longest of his career.
It also concluded MSU’s long search for its 15 th win, its first season with 15 or more wins since winning 21 in 2011-12.
Strugg suspended
Redshirt freshman forward Joe Strugg’s last in-game action came on Dec. 29, playing one minute against UMKC; sometime in between now and then, Strugg had been disciplined by Howland.
Howland confirmed after the game that Strugg has been indefinitely suspended from the team and is not with the program at the moment. Strugg, from Montgomery, Alabama, has played in six games, totaling 15 minutes and three points.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.