GREENVILLE, S.C.
There aren’t any excuses in the upper stratosphere of women’s college basketball.
It doesn’t matter if you’re ready to play, four-time reigning national champion Connecticut will hang a 56-point loss on you like it is nothing. That’s what UConn did to South Florida, a top-25 team for much of the year, on Monday night in the championship game of the American Athletic Conference.
Similar scripts have played out in the other Power Five leagues. Maryland put up 100 points against Michigan State in the semifinals of the Big Ten Conference tournament. It then beat upstart Purdue in the conference title game to earn that league’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
In the Atlantic Coast Conference, Notre Dame beat Duke by 23 points in the championship game to secure its spot as a No. 1 seed.
There also were surprises, as West Virginia upset Baylor on Monday night to win the Big 12 Conference tournament championship and Stanford upended Oregon State to win the Pacific-12 Conference tournament title on Sunday night.
Mississippi State probably didn’t like to see the last two results.
You can argue things might have played out differently if MSU defeated South Carolina on Sunday in the championship game of the Southeastern Conference tournament, but the Bulldogs’ loss likely cost it a chance to earn a No. 1 seed at 6 p.m. Monday when the pairings for the 64-team field will be announced on ESPN. With a lot of the pieces already in place, MSU likely will receive a No. 2 seed — its highest in program history — and will earn a chance to play host to the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament in Starkville.
The difference between being a No. 1 and a No. 2 seed might not be that big for MSU. Aside from the prestige of earning a No. 1 seed, MSU’s fate will depend on which region — Bridgeport, Connecticut; Oklahoma City; Lexington, Kentucky; and Stockton, California — it gets sent to and which teams are the No. 1 and No. 3 seeds in MSU’s bracket, provided the Bulldogs win their first two games.
But this is a telling time for a program that has climbed to the top of the sport in five seasons. Coach Vic Schaefer’s program has gone from 13 to 22 to 27 to 28 to 29 victories and transformed itself from a middle-of-the-road member of the SEC to a top-of-the-tier challenger to South Carolina and a team that has the potential to take out would-be national contenders. You need only look at the miles the Bulldogs traveled in the non-conference schedule and the obstacles they overcame — beating Texas at home, rallying to outlast Iowa State in overtime in Ames, Iowa, defeating USC on its home court — and then the ease with which they defeated league foes like LSU, Florida, Auburn, and Vanderbilt to see how far the program has come.
What will those wins mean anything to MSU in the NCAA tournament? Will they give the Bulldogs the confidence to shake off losses to Kentucky, Tennessee, and South Carolina in the last two weeks?
Schaefer is correct to say there was a sense the sky was falling after MSU lost to Kentucky and Tennessee. Truth be told, an official’s call played a key role in the Wildcats’ overtime victory against the Bulldogs. MSU also has to live with the fact it failed to execute in the extra session when it had a chance to keep its chances of winning the SEC regular-season title outright alive. Unfortunately, MSU then picked the worst time — on Senior Day — to play its poorest game of the season in a disappointing home loss to Tennessee. Those losses cast a cloud over an otherwise spectacular 13-3 run through the SEC that set a record for league wins in a season.
MSU can be satisfied with another record-filled season. It can look at its body of work and believe it has a strong chance to get back at least to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament and possibly take another step to continue the program’s climb to the top.
But we haven’t seen the best MSU has to offer. There have been flashes and dominating stretches where the Bulldogs have stifled opponents on defense and have shared the basketball and executed crisply on offense. They have shown the determination and hustle to go into hostile environments — like they did in Columbia, South Carolina, and on Sunday in Greenville, South Carolina, when they absorbed the Gamecocks’ initial punch and fought back in the first quarter — and play their best basketball. They also have suffered through agonizing segments when they take quick shots, turn the ball over, and don’t play with the energy and intensity needed to beat the top teams.
On Sunday, Schaefer called his team’s 59-49 loss to South Carolina a “big-people game.” From this point, MSU’s success will be judged by its results in games like that one. That’s the responsibility Schaefer and his staff have earned for their hard work. They’re used to it. Schaefer was part of a national championship staff at Texas A&M in 2011, so he knows how to get that level of performance out of his players.
It will be telling to see if he can get that caliber of play out of the Bulldogs. There will be pressure. The Bulldogs will be expected to win two games in Starkville. They likely will face a team like Washington, Florida State, or Syracuse in the Sweet 16. That, too, will be a winnable matchup. A game against a titan like Baylor, Notre Dame, or Connecticut likely would be the reward in the Elite Eight.
Is MSU ready? Only the players will be able to answer that question. There’s no denying MSU has the potential to reach the Final Four, and to challenge for a national title. The Bulldogs have to decide if they’re going to put in the extra work to be a truly special team and come together and produce efforts that are the sum of their talents, not performances where one or two players carry the load and everyone hopes for others to emerge.
The time for efforts like that are long gone. The stage is bigger. The rankings are higher and the company is more accomplished. It’s time for MSU to take the next step and prove it belongs with the nation’s top teams.
Adam Minichino is sports editor of The Dispatch. You can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ctsportseditor.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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