Mississippi State broke a 3 game losing streak and improved their record to 10-5 (1-1) . Dietric Slater was a force off the bench, pouring in 16 points and 12 rebounds to notch his 4th career double-double. Rhodes returned to the starting lineup and led the Dawgs in scoring with 17 points to go along with 8 rebounds. Barry Stewart was his usual solid self, scoring 12 points off the bench, and the thing I was most excited about....7/7 from the line. Finally, someone on this team can knock down some free throws.
Unfortunately I was not able to see the game. I did catch it on the radio, but any nitpicking or praise from me based on that would be nothing more than a shot in the dark. I will make note of a few interesting facts from the game though. Jamont Gordon was pulled out of the game in favor of Ben Hansbrough around the 12 minute mark in the 2nd half and never returned. Was this because of an injury? Seems unlikely since 24 hours after the game nothing of the sort has been reported. This leaves poor play as the reason, which makes sense considering he had shot 3 air balls at that point. Stans had this to say,
"I just thought we had some other guys playing well and I didn’t think Jamont [Gordon] was at his best tonight."
Good enough for me. Now, back to Rhodes, he led the team in another statistic....turnovers, with 6. He has been showing signs of playing at the level he was at last year these past two games though. Hopefully the turnover problem will fade soon enough. Free throw shooting was poor yet again outside of Stewart, and State had 17 turnovers. It has become apparent that this is not going to change this season. The team is what it is, turnover-prone and bad at the charity stripe. It would be pointless for me to bring it up game after game after game, so....I won't. In the future, unless I say otherwise, you can go ahead and assume Mississippi State had an obscene amount of turnovers and shot about 60% from the line.
Let's wrap this up on a positive note though. State dominated inside, outscoring Ole Miss 40-18 inside the paint. That is about as lopsided as it gets. The Bulldog bench also outscored the Rebel bench 32-7. Again, lopsided as it gets. If they can continued to control the inside and get that kind of production off the bench against tougher competition, look for them to spring an upset or two. Unfortunately that is a very big if. Finally I have to give credit to Dietric Slater. I've never been a big fan of his as a player. He's always seemed wild and out of control offensively. Every time I looked up, he was the one taking the shot between three defenders and, of course, missing it. Last night, he was arguably the best player on the court, though. Keep showing me how wrong I was about you Slater.
