Mississippi State has improved as the season progressed. Now we’ll see if the Bulldogs are ready to surprise some folks at the SEC Tournament.
No. 11 seed MSU (14-16) finished the season winning four of their last six, including a 13-point blowout last Saturday against Auburn.
MSU faces No. 6 seed Georgia (17-12) in tonight’s late game at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. It could start anywhere between 8:30 and 9 p.m. depending on how the first three games flow.
Georgia also enters the postseason with some momentum as winners of its last three — Ole Miss, South Carolina and Alabama. It’s Georgia’s first three-game win streak against league foes this year.
“I don’t know if we feel like we have tons of momentum,” said Georgia coach Mark Fox. “I think we have some confidence that if we play a certain way we can give ourselves a chance to win.”
Georgia defeated Mississippi State 66-57 earlier this season in Starkville on Feb. 13, when Yante Maten had a career-high 25 points and Charles Mann added a season-high 21.
Mississippi State shot 28.6 percent from beyond the arc and 30.9 percent overall against Georgia’s zone.
“It was so obvious how bad we were and how good they were and poorly we played that I didn’t watch the whole thing,” State coach Ben Howland said. “We’ve gotta play a lot better than we did.”
That means Malik Newman and Quinndary Weatherspoon will need to knock down outside shots against the zone — something they didn’t do in the first meeting.
But the good news is that those two shot 7 of 10 from beyond the arc in the regular-season finale.
“Those two guys are going to get open looks,” Howland said. “Watching that Auburn game, that was fun to watch, those freshmen taking turns there. That was a terrific performance by our two freshmen in the first half of our last game, so hopefully that momentum carries over.”
Georgia and MSU have met 12 times in the tournament with Georgia holding a 10-2 edge. They met in the first round of the 2012 SEC Tournament, a game Georgia won 71-61.
The winner will advance to Friday’s quarterfinals against South Carolina.
