Taking The Toughness Forward
January 05, 2022 | Women's Basketball, Joel Coleman
Bulldogs hope to build off inspired effort at South Carolina.
STARKVILLE – In basketball, there's seemingly a number for everything. Field goal percentages. Points per game. You name it, it's counted. It's averaged.
There's no statistical column to measure a team's heart. There's no way to tell what's deep inside a group. How do you figure it out? Well, you get punched in the mouth and see.
This past weekend, Mississippi State was thrown for a loop. An impromptu game with only a day or two's notice at then-No. 1 South Carolina was scheduled. The Gamecocks are enough of a challenge when you know they're coming, but to have to go on the road and battle them with very little time to prepare? That'd be enough to make a lot of teams feel defeated before ever taking the floor. But not Mississippi State.
The Bulldogs went toe-to-toe with South Carolina for a half before ultimately falling by only 12 points. It goes in the standings as a defeat, but in the long run, it's possible MSU certainly found some measure of a win. The Dawgs now know that even in the most difficult of situations, they can hang with some of the country's best opposition.
"You never know what's inside until you take that test," State interim head coach Doug Novak said on Wednesday. "You can talk about it. You can read about it. You can watch it from the sidelines. You can experience it yourself [individually], but until a collective group does it together – actually physically and mentally does it – you don't know. You don't know what's inside of you until you're tested like that. That was a nice thing to watch and be a part of and experience – a group working hard towards a goal. It was just very rewarding."
Now no coach or player ever really accepts a moral victory. Most everyone agrees, there's no such thing. That doesn't mean you can't take positives away from a loss.
It's nearly impossible to look at Mississippi State's tenacity and resolve at South Carolina and not be impressed. These Bulldogs have had hurdles to clear on and off the court over the last few months, so it'd have been somewhat understandable had they wilted against the Gamecocks, opting to fight another day.
Nope. This group had too much pride for that.
"They stepped up to a challenge," Novak said. "Anytime somebody does that, you always have the other option not to. You have the other option to blame, whine and complain…We did all those things, but we let them go, then we chose the other way. And it was nice we all chose it – from staff putting together the scouting report really quick, to players listening and executing to the best of their ability in a short amount of time – we responded and accepted the challenge, regardless of how it went. We fought. Extremely proud of that. It's something that you want to build on."
That right there – building – that's the next step for Mississippi State. The Bulldogs are zeroed in on capitalizing from the positive vibes they brought home with them from South Carolina.
It starts on Thursday when MSU travels across the state line for a 6 p.m. CT game at Alabama. The Crimson Tide will hand the Bulldogs another stiff test. They're 10-3 overall and 1-1 in Southeastern Conference play. Alabama is in the top half of the league in both scoring offense (sixth) and scoring defense (fourth).
It won't be easy, but don't expect that fact to get to Mississippi State. The individuals in Maroon and White now know they're capable of taking on even the toughest of conditions. Only time will tell if such knowledge can serve as a launching point, but that's certainly the aim.
"You just need a couple of those moments in your life where you stepped up and answered a challenge and did something that was maybe a little bit tougher than maybe what the next person has to do," Novak said. "You can go back to those things for confidence and it's like, 'We can do this.' That'd be my hope is that we can grow from these situations [like at South Carolina]. Nobody backed down. When it came time to compete, they competed. That's a special thing, especially in today's society."
