STARKVILLE — Nearly a year later, the Mississippi State women’s basketball team is in an eerily similar position.
Following a home loss last season to Vanderbilt University, senior guard Mary Kathryn Govero thanked Commodores coach Melanie Balcomb for her comments about how much the Lady Bulldogs had improved and then said they had to strive for more than morale victories.
Seniors Diamber Johnson and Catina Bett played the role of Govero on Sunday, and their comments following a 65-59 loss to Vanderbilt before a crowd of 830 at Humphrey Coliseum evoked vivid comparisons to MSU’s second of three losses to Vanderbilt last season.
“We just have to get off this up-and-down roller coaster,” Bett said. “It is just hard to talk about right now because we shouldn’t have lost that game.”
Despite a career-high tying 16 points from Bett and a team-high 17 from Johnson off the bench, MSU (13-10, 3-7 Southeastern Conference) lost its fourth straight (all in league) on an afternoon in which it rallied from 13- and seven-point deficits in the first and second halves, respectively. The Lady Bulldogs played with energy, forced Vanderbilt (18-5, 6-4) into 19 turnovers, and limited the Commodores to 42.9 percent shooting in the first half.
But those statistics tell only part of the story.
The other part includes a sub 40-percent shooting effort (26 of 70, 37.1 percent) from the field, a negative assist-to-turnover ratio (nine to 13), a 45-34 rebounding deficit, and a 51.7-percent shooting performance by Vanderbilt in the second half. The final statistic was the most glaring, especially since MSU worked so hard to tie the game at 40 with 12 minutes remaining and then again at 54 with four minutes left. Vanderbilt simply executed at a higher level down the stretch, making 11 of its final 17 shots, including nine that came on layups or in the paint.
Bett’s layup off a pass from Ashley Brown tied the game at 54. Following a missed 3-pointer by Vanderbilt, MSU had a chance to take the lead, but Brittany Young missed a jump shot from the left wing. Stephanie Holzer (game highs of 21 points, 13 rebounds) responded with a hook in the lane to give the Commodores the lead for good.
MSU turned it over on the ensuing possession after an unforced mistake in the halfcourt. Jasmine Lister (eight points, nine assists, three steals in 40 minutes) made MSU pay with her only 3-pointer of the game to make it 59-54 with 2:31 to go. Misses by Kendra Grant and Martha Alwal on the next trip set the stage for Elan Brown to convert a layup off a pass from Lister off an inbounds play. Bett scored inside to trim the lead to 61-56, but Lister hit another jumper and then had a steal in the final minute to help preserve the victory.
It was a familiar refrain for MSU, which lost its second SEC game (LSU was the other) in which it had a chance to protect its home court by making one or two more plays. Like on too many occasions last season, consistency is proving to be a difficult thing for the Lady Bulldogs to achieve for 40 minutes.
“Mississippi State came after us,” Balcomb said. “I think they are a good basketball team. I think they are very aggressive, they play hard, and they have one of the best guards in the country. They made us play defense for a long time.”
Balcomb, who is in her 10th season at Vanderbilt, praised MSU following her team’s 74-62 victory in Starkville on Feb. 17, 2011, saying it had made significant strides since a 65-44 win in Nashville, Tenn., a month earlier. This season, she said her young team too often has used excuses as crutches to explain why it has come up short in games. Despite having a seven- to eight-player rotation based on the health of her players, Balcomb doesn’t want the Commodores to blame injuries or inexperience for their troubles because she feels her team has the right pieces to become a great team.
“Frankly, that is a bunch of crap,” Balcomb said. “If we want to be good this year right now, we can be, but we want to be great.”
MSU talked about great expectations for itself at the beginning of the season. To a player, many of the Lady Bulldogs set returning to the NCAA tournament as a goal after last season’s 13-17 finish. MSU has flashed that potential numerous times this season but largely has been unable to escape scoring droughts or lulls in defensive intensity or focus. Sunday’s loss marked the 12th straight game MSU has had a negative assist-to-turnover ratio. When you factor in MSU is shooting only 37.6 percent from the field, which is in the bottom half of the SEC, and the team is getting outrebounded by an average of six per game in the league, that makes it even tougher for MSU to become a good team.
“I think they are a lot more dangerous than probably their record says,” Balcomb said.
Last season, Govero said in response to Balcomb’s kind words that wins and losses are all that matters. She said the Lady Bulldogs had to continue to improve to get the wins that proved to be just beyond their grasp. MSU did that more often in the final two months, going 5-5 to raise optimism that a team that would be a year older in 2011-12 would be able to build on that finish.
Twenty-three games into the season, MSU coach Sharon Fanning-Otis said the team will continue to mix and match to find the best combinations, and will continue to strive for a tougher and more focused mind-set. Still, she admitted it has been frustrating seeing the same mistakes and watching as her team hurts itself with unforced mistakes.
“When a game is on the line and it is how you respond maybe to the next play, you have to have a stop,” Fanning-Otis said. “We turned it over. There was a loose ball and we didn’t get to it early. Then we come down and we don’t get through a screen and they drain a three. That’s what great teams attempt to do. It’s your mind-set that you’re focused through things. You can’t have wasted possessions on offense or defense.”
The players felt the same way. Johnson, who in many ways is the leader of the team, said the game was there to be taken only to see it slip away.
“Same old same old, woulda, coulda, shoulda at the end of the day,” Johnson said. “We keep saying the same things. We’re hurting ourselves, but we are taking the steps we need. It is not like we’re taking steps backward. … It is good to know teams know our record doesn’t show and know what we could be, and we know what we could be. We just have to get those wins to prove it.”
Said Bett, “She took the words right out of my mouth. It is just hard to take a loss when you know you’re trying to do everything you can. … The last two games we have been pulling the whole game together, it is tough. It is tough.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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