For the second-straight game, Mississippi State basketball overcame a big second-half deficit to give themselves a chance to win in the end. For the second-straight game, the Bulldogs failed to secure a victory.
Mississippi State dropped its regular season finale to Arkansas 93-92 in Fayetteville on Saturday. The Bulldogs trailed by as much as 16 but fought all the way to take a lead in the final minutes. State and Hogs would battle to the close, and with 11 seconds left, trailing by one, the Bulldogs would get two (contested) looks for the win, missing both.
MSU finishes the regular season 20-11 with an 8-10 record in the SEC.
Mississippi State's defensive effort against Arkansas was putrid
State's defense has been bad this season, and the leading cause has been their horrific three-point defense. The trend continued on Saturday, as an Arkansas team that came in shooting about 31% from three made 9-21 attempts from distance. However, State usually has been solid at defending the paint and can create problems for teams, like Arkansas, that prefer to attack that area.
That wasn't the case in Fayetteville. The Hogs bullied MSU to the tone of 42 points in the paint and 14 second chance points. Arkansas made 63% of their two-point attempts and had a pair of big men post double-doubles (and their best post player was out with injury).
The lone saving grace for the Bulldogs defensively was their 19 points off turnovers. But even then, with only 10 turnovers forced, that says more about them making the most of those opportunities on the other end of the floor than it does them finding success defending. This was a thoroughly awful game on defense, arguably more so than many of their other bad showings.
The Bulldogs cannot count on winning on nights where Josh Hubbard's shot isn't falling
The goal of the offseason for Chris Jans was to add more capable scorers to the roster so they could withstand Josh Hubbard having an off performance. In theory, they should have been successful in doing this. Because while there hasn't been the consistent production from other players that they've hoped for, most games there's been enough of an offensive output beyond Hubbard that State should be able to win.
The problem is with how awful they've been defensively, it doesn't matter if others step up. They still need Hubbard at his best. When they don't get it, they're probably losing. Hubbard was 4-16 shooting on Saturday. He made some big threes and was perfect at the charity stripe, but he still had far too many misses. Several other Bulldogs contributed well on offense, but it didn't matter in the end.
After today, State is 4-8 in SEC play when Hubbard shoots under 40% from the floor. Three of those four wins came in games where State got great defensive efforts. Now, as we saw in the first game with Alabama, a big day from Josh doesn't guarantee a win. But a bad shooting day almost certainly means a loss.
Mississippi State basketball can fight back in games, but they can't seem to close the deal
As said at the start, this is now consecutive games where State did enough to overcome a big deficit in the second half but couldn't do enough to win. We've seen that more than just the last two games, and the inability to close when they're in a game where they've had to battle for a chance late has been maddening.
They had chances late against Kentucky and Oklahoma. They had literal looks at the win against Alabama, Texas, and Arkansas. They lost all five. They hung on for dear life against South Carolina and Georgia, but the Ole Miss game in Starkville is the one time they actually pulled out a win when both teams were trading blows late (and it took a miracle sequence to pull it off).
It's great that this team has the resiliency to fight back late when they seem to be completely out of the game. It's exhausting though that the final result continues to be an unfavorable one in those situations.