STARKVILLE — Of the state’s four men’s basketball teams that have serious dreams of earning a bid to the NCAA tournament, two will meet tonight in Starkville
The University of Mississippi will look to improve its at-large status by completing a regular-season sweep of Mississippi State University 6 tonight (ESPN2) at Humphrey Coliseum. Many of the bracket projections released this week have the Rebels (14-8, 4-4 Southeastern Conference) as a bubble team of the field. ESPN bracket expert Joe Lunardi has Ole Miss as the first team out of the tournament with a little more than a month until the field is selected.
“It really depends on Ole Miss (if three teams are at-large selections),” Lunardi said in an e-mail response to The Dispatch. “The other two teams (MSU and the University of Southern Mississippi) should be able to get in.”
Southern Mississippi (20-4, 7-2 Conference USA) is the highest-ranked team in the Ratings Percentage Index despite its 71-61 loss Wednesday at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
CBS bracket analyst Jerry Palm has USM as a No. 6 seed. He also has the University of Memphis as the only other team from Conference USA to make the NCAA’s field of 68.
Mississippi Valley State (12-11, 11-0 Southwest Athletic Conference) also shouldn’t be ignored. The Delta Devils lead their league by two games after losing 11 of their first 12 games in the first two months of the season. MVSU will be the favorite to win the SWAC tournament to earn the league’s automatic bid. The SWAC tournament winner could end up in one of the four First Four games March 13-14 in Dayton, Ohio.
No. 20 MSU (18-5, 5-3), which is No. 18 in the USA Today/ESPN poll, has plenty of time to bolster a résumé that includes neutral-site wins against Texas A&M (12-11) and Arizona (16-8) and home wins against Utah State (12-12) and West Virginia (16-9). It also has an overtime win at Vanderbilt. Five of the Bulldogs’ eight remaining SEC regular-season games will be at home prior to the SEC tournament March 8-11 in Baton Rouge, La.
“I like Mississippi State’s (chances),” Palm said in an e-mail to The
Dispatch. “USM doesn’t have a big margin for error because of the quality of its league, and Ole Miss needs to step it up a bit (for an at-large berth).”
Therefore, the argument could be made that another win against a team
in the top 50 of the RPI like MSU would help Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy make his first NCAA tournament since taking the job in Oxford. The Rebels have just one victory away from Oxford since Christmas break, including two overtime losses at Auburn University and the University of Alabama.
“We’re a handful of possessions away from sitting here at 7-1 (in the SEC),” Kennedy said. “If you dwell on that, it can drive you crazy. The reality is there’s nothing we can do about the first eight. All we control is the next eight, starting (tonight). It shows me our attention to detail needs to improve.”
MSU has won the past two against Ole Miss in Starkville, and 24 out of the past 27. It also has won 12 straight games at home, the third longest streak in Humphrey Coliseum history. Ole Miss hasn’t swept MSU since 1998.
“We didn’t play our best game and they played awful well,” MSU coach Stansbury said of his team’s 75-68 loss Jan. 18 at Ole Miss. “It’s never easy on the road and they are awful good there at home. We don’t want to put them on the free throw line as much as we did up there, and offensive rebounding was a factor in that game. We have to play better than we played the last time.”
Ole Miss center Reginald Buckner scored a career-high 19 points and grabbed 15 rebounds against MSU in Oxford.
“I feel like once you win the first one you kind of have the upper hand,” Ole Miss forward Terrance Henry. “We always know all their calls. We know what they’re going to do. It’s a matter of us going in there playing like we did the last time.”
A key for MSU will be its ability to get the ball inside to junior forward Arnett Moultrie (17.0 points, 11.1 rebounds a game), who has 13 double-doubles, which leads the league. In the first meeting with the Rebels, the Bulldogs attempted 29 shots 3-pointers.
“I don’t know if they were begging us to shoot it. You don’t have to
beg us much to shoot it. We’ll shoot it,” Stansbury said. “When you’re on the road people will zone up on you a little bit more. We have pretty good balance against the zone. I don’t think we are a team that you look at and say, ‘Man they can’t shoot it, we need to zone them.’ “
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