Tuesday night, Mississippi State basketball got their long-awaited signature win of this season, running away from #7 Texas A&M 70-54. That win over the Aggies locked the Bulldogs into their third-straight NCAA Tournament appearance, and that allows them to take a different approach down the stretch this season.
Mississippi State basketball can play to improve its NCAA Tournament seeding in the coming weeks
There are about three and a half weeks until Selection Sunday. Mississippi State has five remaining regular season games, and they'll then play at least one game in the SEC Tournament. And while in recent years this closing stretch would've been pivotal for the Bulldogs to play their way into the NCAA Tournament, they don't have that same pressure this year.
Instead, they get a golden opportunity to use those games to bolster their NCAA Tournament resume even further. Rather than road trips to Norman, Tuscaloosa, and Fayetteville being critical for making the field, those are chances at adding more quality wins and moving up seed lines. Whereas a home tilt with LSU would previously have been a landmine that could potentially ruin postseason hopes, that's no longer a concern.
That's not to say that State doesn't have to take these games seriously. They need to continue playing well if for no reason other than momentum going into the postseason. And at this point, if they were to fall off it'd be a major disappointment. You need to see them keep winning.
But they are now granted the ability to play more freely in these games. They can take an approach of "we've got a chance at something special" as opposed to "we can't afford to lose". That's a far better mentality to take to the court as you're gearing up for March.
It's a position State hasn't been in at this point of the year in quite some time. In Chris Jans' first two seasons in Starkville, the Bulldogs had to scramble down the stretch to reach the tournament. Since 2009, the 2019 Bulldogs squad is the only State team with postseason aspirations other than this one that didn't enter the month of March with doubts about their tournament lives.
Being a lock for the Big Dance before the month of March is about as good as you can ask for from this Mississippi State program. Now we get to see if they can make the most of that opportunity.