STARKVILLE — The Mississippi State women’s basketball team has thrived on punching first and refusing to allow opponents to get up off the mat.
But sometimes the sweet science of March Madness relies on subtle adjustments instead of a haymaker that renders the other team helpless.
On Monday night, No. 1 seed MSU used a series of those tweaks in a 14-4 third-quarter run to gain the separation it needed en route to a 71-56 victory against No. 9 seed Oklahoma State before a crowd of 9,881 in the second round of the NCAA tournament’s Kansas City Regional at Humphrey Coliseum.
MSU (34-1) will play No. 4 seed North Carolina State (26-8) at 5:30 p.m. Friday (ESPN) in the Sweet 16 at the Sprint Center. North Carolina State, which is out of the Atlantic Coast Conference, beat Maryland 74-60 on Sunday.
No. 2 seed Texas will take on No. 3 seed UCLA in the other half of the Sweet 16 at 8 p.m.
“I don’t know how much we have left,” MSU coach Vic Schaefer said. “I look out there tonight and that first half, like I was talking to Teaira (McCowan) just now, it was just hard to catch our second wind it seemed like. They found it. Once we found it, I thought we really kicked it into gear. I thought we wore them down a little bit.
“This team is special. It’s like (Syracuse men’s basketball) coach (Jim) Boeheim said the other night, when you’re the favorite, there is only one thing people are going to talk about. If you’re the favorite, they’re not going to talk about you if you keep winning. They’re going to talk about you if you stumble. Some teams are just happy to get in. I bring it up to say this, they have the target on their back and they continue to take everybody’s best shot. I don’t know if I have ever seen anything like it. I just can’t say enough about them.”
Schaefer can be proud of a team that equaled the 2016-17 squad’s mark for most wins in a season with a spirited effort in a back-and-forth affair that featured 11 ties and 10 lead changes. MSU earned the cushion it needed after Mandy Coleman tied the game at 41 off a pass from Loryn Goodwin at the 6-minute, 55-second mark. From there, MSU went into sustained attack mode and finished the third quarter on a 14-4 run. The surge included a little bit of everything that has made MSU such a high-powered offensive machine. Roshunda Johnson started the spurt by making a back cut in the motion offense and taking a pass from Victoria Vivians (team-high 23 points) and scoring. OSU freshman guard Braxtin Miller collapsed in a pile with Johnson following the play and had to be helped from the floor.
Miller’s absence proved costly, as the Bulldogs continued their push.
Vivians scored on a layup off a turnover, McCowan rebounded a Johnson miss and scored, and Vivians hit a pull-up jumper in the lane. MSU also capitalized on the fourth foul being called on Goodwin at the 4:39 mark. The move forced OSU coach Jim Littell to take the graduate student, who scored 35 points against MSU in a regular-season meeting in December, off the point.
MSU battled through three missed shots and regained the momentum thanks to McCowan (21 points, 18 rebounds), who collected a loose ball and scored on a layup. William (17 points) added the final dagger after she ran her defender off screens on the baseline, used a shot fake to gain space, and drained the mid-range shot.
William said the Bulldogs usually like to break off their cuts on the weave to get layups, but she said the Cowgirls switched defenders on the motion and usually had someone staying home in the lane. As a result, William said the middle of the floor was open. From there, it was just a matter of finding the right matchup.
“We just wanted to get a mismatch and get their four or five players right there (in the middle) so we could get around them,” William said. “If we could get around them, we were going to get a layup. If we couldn’t get around them, they were going to foul us.”
William said she didn’t remember how the Cowgirls defended the Bulldogs on Dec. 3 in MSU’s 79-76 victory in Starkville. Vivians said OSU “really didn’t switch much” in the first meeting. She said she recalled Coleman staying on her the whole time when she was driving. On Monday night, she said the Cowgirls switched when the Bulldogs drove, so they had to counter the defense.
Senior guard Blair Schaefer said Texas A&M and Missouri defended MSU in similar fashion by packing their defense in the middle. She said going against those defenses helped the Bulldogs understand they had to move the ball to make the Cowgirls shift to get them “out of whack” on defense. As a result, the Bulldogs were able to get layups.
“We were trying to pass, pass, and then drive,” Blair Schaefer said. “The two people who were cutting were supposed to get in the way of the person who was driving it. Then they started sagging off so they were going to switch it and wait on us. That is why the free-throw line was open. That’s why Morgan was getting a few free-throw jumpers off because they were trying to play the play. Either we didn’t run into them because they were waiting or we ended up getting a good rub and we got all the way to the rim.”
Despite the counters, MSU shot only 41.8 percent (28-for-67) from the field. The key statistic, though, was it attempted 16 more shots than OSU thanks to a 41-31 rebounding edge. McCowan had eight of the Bulldogs’ 13 offensive rebounds. The Cowgirls had only four offensive rebounds.
MSU’s 12 second-chance points and 44-26 edge in points in the paint made the counters in the motion attack even harder to handle.
“They were still able to get downhill,” Goodwin said. “We were switching screens, but they’re just really good at that. They have run that all year. Probably people have tried to switch it, stay with, so they just have counters for everything, and they run a lot of good sets for their shooters, so they’re constantly coming off screens and just wearing you down offensively and defensively.
“I think they’re really good at what they do, and they executed on that tonight eventually. I think we stuck with them in the first half but we eventually got worn down and then banged up and with fouls and they were able to create and score off that.”
OSU coach Jim Littell felt there was a little momentum change when Miller went down and stayed out of the game for 1:38 and when Goodwin was whistled for her fourth foul. Miller returned at the 4:39 mark, but OSU managed only two more points in the quarter on a layup by Goodwin. The Cowgirls cut the deficit to seven points early in the fourth quarter but never seriously challenged after that.
“We tried to switch and keep them in front,” Littell said. “They run a little offense where they hand off and they chip block you a little bit. It is legal. It is like the NFL, where at the goal line the receivers are rubbing off each other. It is very similar to that dynamic they have in football.
“They’re just hard to guard. We had trouble guarding it the first time. When we switched this time, it created some matchups where they had people a lot quicker than we did. The bottom line is they were quicker and more athletic in some positions than we were and we had trouble keeping them in front of us.”
Kaylee Jensen had 18 points and seven rebounds to lead four players in double figures for OSU, which ends its season at 21-11.
OSU used a 14-0 run in the first quarter to build its biggest lead, 20-12. The Cowgirls shot 7-for-14 from the field. Goodwin had two baskets and three assists and kept OSU on the attack by probing the defense, drawing defenders, and kicking to open teammates.
MSU answered with an 8-0 to tie the game on a drive by Vivians with 7:23 to go in the second quarter. The teams then went back and forth the rest of the period until Vivians found Schaefer for a 3-pointer that gave the Bulldogs a 35-34 halftime lead.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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