Bulldogs Dismantle Tide, Win West

Save for stretches at the beginning of both the first and second half, Mississippi State dominated Alabama in every phase of the game on Sunday to ultimately come away with a 91-67 win. For senior day, Rick Stansbury made a change to the starting lineup, starting senior Piotr Stelmach in place of Richard Delk. It was a nice gesture but probably was responsible for Alabama jumping out to an 8-2 lead as Stelmach simply could not keep up. After he exited the game though, it only took 3 minutes for MSU to tie the game at 10. From this point State would outscore Alabama 31-19 to take a 41-29 lead into the half. It looked like the game was had already gotten away from the Crimson Tide but to their credit they came out of the half with a 12-2 run to cut the lead to 43-41 at which point Stansbury quickly called a timeout to straighten his team out. Whatever he said worked as MSU proceeded to go on a 39-9 run which left them leading 82-50. Coach Stansbury began to call off the dogs at this point and State cruised to the 91-67 final.

This was just a marvelous performance by Mississippi State, probably the best they have played all year. Everyone played well but Ben Hansbrough and Jarvis Varnado deserve special mention. Varnado had by far his best game of the year and I would argue so did Ben. In just 10 minutes off the bench Varnado had 10 points, 8 rebounds, 2 blocks and 1 steal. Now that's what I call productive minutes. In regards to Hansbrough he was quite simply a wild man. He was everywhere, playing stifling defense, dishing out assists, grabbing rebounds, picking pockets, making big shots, etc. When the dust settled he found himself with 13 points, 5 assists, 4 rebounds, and 4 steals. Just an all around fantastic game.

Then of course the usual players also showed up big. Rhodes had 18 points and 7 boards and Reginald Delk put up 16 points even though he was 1-6 from behind the line. Richard Delk, while not doing much offensively, played tremendous defense as usual, coming up with a career high 3 blocks. Jamont Gordon had 11 points, 5 rebounds and 9 assists. Definitely not his best scoring day, but he was terrific in finding the open man and just letting the game come to him.

With the win MSU tied Ole Miss for 1st place in the West and gained a share of the division title. Tiebreakers give Miss. State the 1 seed in the SEC tournament though. They'll play the winner of Alabama vs. Kentucky on Friday. If they can play like they did Sunday, they have a good shot of making it to Sunday. That's a big if though.