STARKVILLE — For the time being, Mississippi State is among the men’s basketball elite — and even better than the ones that make up that elite class most of the time.
Entering Monday, college basketball had only seven unbeaten teams. The list did not include the usual suspects of Duke, Michigan State, Kentucky, North Carolina or Wichita State, yet MSU was on it. Still, a question remains: as 8-0 MSU faces its biggest test yet, at Cincinnati (7-2) 6 p.m. Tuesday (ESPN2) at BB&T Arena, how much can one glean from MSU’s eight-game winning streak?
Advanced numbers suggest MSU has made its undefeated start happen against a weaker schedule than almost all of its fellow undefeateds. According to Ken Pomeroy’s numbers, MSU’s best wins of the season came on Nov. 26 against Jacksonville State, Dec. 3 against Dayton and Nov. 22 against Stephen F. Austin, which rank 97th, 123rd and 138th in the nation, respectively, out of 351 Division I teams.
Meanwhile, three of the other six undefeated teams have at least two wins over top 40 KenPom teams: Villanova beat Gonzaga and Tennessee, TCU beat SMU and Nevada and Arizona State beat Kansas and Xavier. Of the three other undefeated teams — Georgetown, Miami and Florida State — the latter two have combined to only play four teams ranked worse than 275th in KenPom, while MSU has done that by itself. Alabama State, Florida A&M and Green Bay are all worse than 275th and North Georgia is not ranked in KenPom as a Division II team, also making MSU the only current unbeaten to play a Division II team.
MSU is also the only current unbeaten that has yet to play away from home, although that changes Tuesday night. Six of Villanova’s 10 games have either been at a neutral site or on the road; Miami has two road wins over top 150 KenPom teams; TCU is 3-0 in neutral site games; Arizona State just pulled off what may be the most impressive win of the season over the weekend by beating Kansas State on the road.
MSU will play its lone true road game of the non-conference schedule on Tuesday; it still has one neutral site game against Southern Miss in Jackson on Dec. 23.
All of that being the case, MSU’s schedule is far from the path of least resistance. Stephen F. Austin proved that.
“That team is a good, hard-nosed team,” MSU coach Ben Howland said after the game. “That’s an NCAA Tournament team.”
Despite those numbers, MSU has the fourth-highest Ratings Percentage Index (31) of the seven undefeated teams. RPI is a statistic the NCAA tournament selection committee uses to pick the at-large teams for the 68-team field.
Stephen F. Austin and Jacksonville State are projected to get into the NCAA Tournament by winning the Southland Conference and the Ohio Valley Conference. As a whole, MSU’s schedule has been significantly more difficult than fellow unbeaten Georgetown, which has yet to play a team ranked higher than 220 while half of MSU’s opponents rank better than that.
Still, it has yet to see a test like Cincinnati. No MSU opponent collects offensive rebounds at the rate Cincinnati does (37.6 percent); none have defended as well as the Bearcats have, posting an effective field goal percentage allowed of 43.2 percent (15th in the nation) and a turnover percentage of 23.1.
Tuesday night, MSU gains a clearer picture of where it stands.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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