State Women Close Out SEC Road Slate At Third-Ranked Tennessee Sunday
STARKVILLE, Miss. ? Coming off their first conference road win of the season, the Mississippi State Lady Bulldogs (16-11, 4-8 Southeastern Conference) are seeking to continue to streak. MState faces third-ranked Tennessee (24-2, 10-1 SEC) at 1:30 p.m. CT on Sunday afternoon at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville. The game will be broadcast on Fox Sports South with Rich Waltz and Teresa Edwards calling the action.
Sunday’s game will mark the 12th time in the last two years the Lady Bulldogs have faced a ranked opponent. State’s last victory over a Top-25 team came last season in a 73-71 thriller over then No.22 Mississippi.
Lady Bulldog Head Coach Sharon Fanning and Tennessee Head Coach Pat Summitt have met 32 times during their careers. The two served on the same staff at Tennessee, when Fanning served as a graduate assistant on the Lady Vol staff during the 1975-76 season.
Tennessee is 24-2 on the year with their losses coming in overtime against Stanford and at home against LSU. The Lady Vols are 10-1 in league play and led by all-American Candace Parker, who averages 20.6 points and 8.7 rebounds per game.
State enters the game coming off a win at South Carolina on Thursday evening. For the third consecutive game, junior guard Marneshia Richard scored in double figures with her season-high 20 points to go along with another season-high of six steals. The Lady Bulldogs also had two other players score in double figures, as sophomore guard Alexis Rack added 11 points to the MSU cause and junior forward Robin Porter scored 10 points to go along with six rebounds in the game.
Rack leads the team in scoring with 11.6 points per contest, while sophomore forward Tysheka Grimes is close behind with 11.4 points.
Richard currently averages 9.9 points each time out. Grimes is the teams’ leading rebounder with 6.5 boards, while Richard continues to rank as one of the nation’s best in assists per game with 4.8, 47th in the country. Rack is 25th in three-pointers made per game with an average of 2.6 each game.
In this season’s previous meeting, MState pumped out a 21-0 run and held second-ranked Tennessee without a field goal for almost 10 minutes on Feb. 7. MState took a lead into the lockerroom at the intermission, 40-33. The marked the first time this season the defending national champions trailed at the break. Tennessee went on to win the game 87-69.
The Lady Bulldogs got a career-high 32 points off the bench from Rack and held a seven-point halftime lead. Rack scored her 32 points on 10-of-18 shooting and 7-for-13 from the behind the arc. Freshman forward Mary Kathryn Govero added nine points on 4-of-10 shooting.
Tennessee had five players tally double-figure scoring, led by 16 points each from Shannon Bobbitt and Alexis Hornbuckle. Parker added 11 points and led the team with 11 rebounds. Alberta Auguste scored 12 off the bench for UT.
Following Sunday’s game and an open date on Feb. 28, MState returns to action Sunday, March 2, hosting LSU in a televised 2:30 p.m. contest from Humphrey Coliseum.