No. 20 Bulldogs bite LSU
By By Richard Dark
EMG staff writer
BATON ROUGE Adversity, it seems, can often be the best fuel.
Rick Stansbury knew it. And so did his 20th-ranked Mississippi State Bulldogs. They were a better team than they showed against Kentucky.
And whether or not you call it dwelling on the past, the Bulldogs used that pain as fuel to come into to a hostile Pete Maravich Assembly Center and stave off a comeback by the LSU Tigers to take a 64-54 win before a crowd of 10,529 Saturday afternoon.
State snapped LSU's home streak thanks in large part to a tough zone defense that gave the Tigers (12-2) fits in the first half. LSU did not even attempt a shot until the game clock read 16:47, and went scoreless for six minutes at one point. After the Tigers tied it at six, State responded with a 17-0 run that defanged the rabid crowd and had the Tigers struggling to execute even the simplest offensive plays. They collected just one offensive rebound in the first 20 minutes of play.
Brandon Vincent laid in a pair of his 12 points at the 5:06 mark of the first half to give MSU (14-1) its largest lead of the day at 27-8. But LSU coach John Brady made some adjustments and the hosts stormed back, using a 16-5 run that bridged both halves including a 7-0 pop before the intermission to pull back to with single digits.
With 18:38 left in the game, State went cold and the Tigers got some clutch shooting from guard Xavier Whipple to forge a tie. Whipple scored the bulk of his eight points during a seven-minute stretch that ended with a bucket from Tiger forward Jaime Lloreda that knotted the game at 37. Lloreda led the Tigers with 13.
Darrell Mitchell (10 points) blew the lid off the PMAC with a 3-pointer at the 8:40 mark that gave LSU its only lead at 42-40, prompting Stansbury to burn a timeout.
Following the timeout, MSU did two things differently that sparked them. They left the zone defense in favor of a man-to-man and, perhaps most importantly, reserve guard Gary Ervin took over, dishing the ball with confidence and scoring seven of his 13 career-high points to push away LSU, which continued to cling to one-point deficits.
The backbreaker came when the Brooklyn native buried a lights out trey at the 5:19 mark to give State a six-point lead in an affair where offense was scarce. Two minutes later, his free throws rebuilt the lead to a half dozen and Timmy Bowers (11 points) made three free throws in the closing moments to settle the issue.
LSU actually wound up with a better overall shooting percentage for the game, (45-40), but turned the ball over more (19-12). Both teams collected 33 rebounds. From long range, the Bulldogs were more effective hitting 6-of-12, while LSU clanked the iron at 5-of-18. Winsome Frazier added 10 for State.
Antonio Hudson warmed up in the final 10 minutes to finish with 11 for LSU.
But Vincent just chalked it up to a certain chip on the shoulder. "We knew it was important for us to come back and put that (UK) loss behind us," he said. "We came in here and did that."
