Mississippi State basketball vs. Miami: 3 discouraging stats
By Ethan Lee
As the Mississippi State basketball team came up short in the loss to Miami, there were several concerning stats that showed up.
Things weren’t phenomenal for Sam Purcell and the Mississippi State women’s basketball team Wednesday evening. While the Bulldogs provided plenty of a challenge to the Miami Hurricanes, the Mississippi State basketball team ended up losing in frustrating fashion.
There were, of course, numerous problems with how the Bulldogs performed at home against Miami. State now has plenty of seasons still left up ahead for the Bulldogs to bounce back this season, but they’re going to need to routinely play better basketball than that.
And here are 3 concerning stats from MSU’s loss to the Hurricanes.
Mississippi State basketball vs. Miami: 3 concerning stats in Bulldogs’ loss
49-23 rebounding margin – It’s generally never fun to see another team get more rebounds than your favorite team, but Sam Purcell had to watch the Mississippi State women’s basketball get outrebounded by 26 boards. That’s almost certainly dreadful and it’s a huge reason why the Bulldogs lost this game against the Hurricanes.
What’s shocking is Miami only scored 15 second chance points in this game, but that’s still more than the nine second chance points MSU was able to put up against the Hurricanes. The Bulldogs had some depth issues last night and that’s one huge reason for this disparity, but MSU will need to figure out how to work around this issue. They can’t consistently get demolished like this if they want to have success in the SEC.
5-17 three point shooting in the second half – Purcell is working on rebuilding this program and one key aspect is going to be getting the Bulldogs to be stellar scoring consistently throughout the game. But while the Bulldogs started hot, making seven of 13 three points attempts in the first half, things weren’t so great in the second half.
Three pointers were a huge reason the Bulldogs were able to keep up with Miami for most of this game and they served as an equalizer of sorts as Miami had a lot more depth, but it just wasn’t something MSU was able to sustain. Streaky shooting happens from time to time, but the Bulldogs can’t afford to struggle like this from three if they want to keep winning against good teams.
9 bench points – A lot of the issues with scoring from the bench had to do with the fact that Sam Purcell had to utilize a seven player rotation against the Miami Hurricanes. When your bench is that small, there’s really not many opportunities for them to be productive and score a ton of points.
I don’t think there’s an easy answer for this one when the Bulldogs are so thin due to injuries and illness, but it was shocking to see how Miami was able to utilize its depth and get 45 bench points against the Bulldogs. It might take time, and some more recruiting cycles, for Purcell to truly get the team to where it needs to be. But credit to the players who were out there against Miami for keeping this close when there was such a gulf in depth and available players.