Little Things Leading To Big Things
February 19, 2023 | Men's Basketball, Joel Coleman
Win at Ole Miss shows how State keeps finding ways to win.
STARKVILLE – Smiles were everywhere on the faces of the Bulldogs.
It was Saturday evening up in Oxford and Mississippi State had just defeated instate rival Ole Miss in overtime to sweep the regular-season series. It was MSU's sixth win in the last seven games.
More importantly, the victory kept State on a path towards the NCAA Tournament. In the projections released by ESPN's Joe Lunardi on Sunday, the Bulldogs would currently be in the field.
They'll have to continue handling their business to go dancing of course, starting with Tuesday's 6 p.m. game at Missouri. But regardless of what happens, the fact MSU remains solidly in the tournament mix in late February is a testament to their total commitment to doing the little things right. Those little things are leading to big things.
Saturday's tilt against the Rebels was a prime example. It's easy to glance at a box score and see that Bulldog veterans Tolu Smith and Cameron Matthews combined for 34 points, or that Smith brought down 12 rebounds as well to notch the 21st double-double of his tremendous career. All of that was critically important. However, it was the things that weren't on the stat sheet that again made all the difference.
No number could quantify the focus of Eric Reed, Jr. He scored only two points all day and has struggled to get shots to fall of late. Yet it's not impacting his defense one bit and his hustle and grit was on display for all to see in the closing moments of regulation.
Ole Miss' Matthew Murrell went up for what could've been a game-winning jumper for the Rebels. The ball didn't have the chance to get anywhere near the hoop though as it was blocked by Reed.
It'd surely be tempting to let frustrations on the offensive end trickle to the defensive side. Reed has shown none of that, and his unrelenting hustle is a huge reason the Dawgs won again on Saturday and kept on stacking the victories.
"He really stepped up," head coach Chris Jans said of Reed.
And how about Dashawn Davis displaying a resiliency that can't be quantified? Once the game got to overtime, the talented guard took over and scored six points to help MSU put the game away.
The most impressive part of it all wasn't the points themselves. Jans commended Davis' ability to shake off the previous 40 minutes of game action when things weren't always going Davis' way.
"He struggled for a majority of the game," Jans said of Davis. "He just couldn't get it going…I think he was 0-for-3 at halftime and hadn't impacted the game as much as he's capable of, and he got frustrated. I could see it in his body language. You could see it on the court.
"He just stuck to it. We put the ball in his hands a number of times late. They were huge possessions… He hit some tough, tough shots. Not analytically-correct shots, but he hit some shots that allowed us to win the game and I'm proud of the fact he stuck with the game and the team, and he made some big ones down the stretch."
The efforts of Reed and Davis individually provided the perfect picture of what these Bulldogs are collectively. They're tough – incredibly tough. They won't be shaken. They've proven it time and time and time again.
They lost seven of their first eight Southeastern Conference games this year but stuck with it to put together this current hot streak. They were disappointed last Wednesday in a close home loss to Kentucky but rebounded with Saturday's key rivalry win.
Then over the course of play on the court in Oxford, State showed its resolve continuously. There was Reed. There was Davis. There was the shaking off of a first-half stretch that saw MSU's turnovers help Ole Miss erase a 10-point deficit and put the Dawgs behind. But like this group has been doing the last three weeks, they just found a way.
Nothing is guaranteed down the stretch. It'd be a shock if one thing wasn't certain though. These Bulldogs are going to fight. They're going to scratch. They're going to claw. They're going to give it all they've got right down to the little things. They're too tough to allow themselves to do anything else.
"We believe in each other," D.J. Jeffries said. "Even when we get down, we know we're going to come back and fight. Coach Jans put this in our DNA. He doesn't accept us laying down or bowing down, so we're not going to bow down. We're going to keep fighting and keep pushing until we get what we want."
