MSU rally falls short in battle of Bulldogs

Thursday night was a second-straight loss from Mississippi State, but it wasn’t the loss that would define the home standing Bulldogs against Georgia, it was the effort in the second half.

After a putrid first half that saw MSU fall behind by as much as 27 points, MSU wouldn’t go down without swinging. State had a onepoint lead with 55 seconds remaining in the game but couldn’t quite find a way to come away with the victory in a 66-63 Georgia win.

“I thought our effort was spectacular,” MSU interim coach Doug Novak said. “We showed some toughness and any of the aftermath of the Ole Miss game was washed away. It’s fun to watch kids get lost in a game and they got lost in a game in a positive way. They were pulling for each other and making each other better and they hurt in that locker room afterwards because when you invest that much, there should be pain and there should be hurt.”

As disappointing the outcome of the game, it gave State a snapshot of what the team is capable of doing if it plays like it did in the second half. MSU erased what was a first half, more notably a first quarter, to forget. After going up 7-4 on a Rickea Jackson 3-point field goal with 7:36 remaining in the first quarter, State wouldn’t score again until 7:34 in the second quarter.

In between that time, MSU missed 14-straight shots and Georgia raced out to a 29-7 lead. After holding a 23-7 lead after one quarter, the visiting Bulldogs pushed the lead out to 44-24 at the half.

“We’re dead in the water in that first half,” Novak said. “We’re so uncharacteristic in our transition defense. I can’t even explain what we were doing – it was so out of character. We had three things down on the board that mattered on the defensive side and obviously I didn’t do a very good job because those three things we were atrocious. One was transition defense, two was post defense and three was rebounding.

For whatever reason we were not quite ready to match their physicality.”

State came out of the locker room with a purpose despite the big deficit. It was a 13-0 run right away and an 18-2 run overall that cut the lead down to as little as four points in the third. By the fourth quarter, MSU had trimmed it to one point on several different occasions before finally getting the lead on Jackson’s midrange bucket with 55 seconds left.

On the following possession, Georgia got the lead back for good as Mikayla Coombs hit a midrange jumper of her own. With 13 seconds left, Denae Carter missed a shot in the paint and that was State’s last chance to win the game in the heartbreaking defeat.

MSU turned around its terrible start from the field to shoot 41% in the game and made 25 of its last 47 shots in the final three quarters. State turned the ball over just four times in the game and turned the Bulldogs from the Peach State over 16 times but the rebounds were an issue for MSU with Georgia winning the battle of the boards 5028.

Jackson had a monster game with 27 points and had seven rebounds playing all 40 minutes. Anastasia Hayes had 16 points on 7-of-16 shooting and Myah Taylor added 11 points. Carter had four points but 10 rebounds and held All-southeastern

Conference player Jenna Staiti umn, but the fight that we to just eight points. showed just gives us that extra

It was a loss that was all boost to keep going forward the more frustrating due to in the SEC.” how close State was to winning MSU (11-6, 2-3 SEC) the game, but the effort

will try to take what happened and the tenacity of the Bulldogs in the second half on from Starkville is something that they can build on Thursday and go get a road ahead. win on Sunday against Arkansas.

“At the end of the day, Game time at Bud we fought,” Taylor said. “We Walton Arena is scheduled ended up on the losing col-* for 3 p.m.