ESPN is as confused as we are with the bball Dogs...

[CadaverDawg]

3. Mississippi State is impossible to figure out. I'm high on the Bulldogs' talent. Dee Bost, Arnett Moultrie and Renardo Sidney are a scary trio, and Rodney Hood
is one of the nation's most underrated freshmen. But it's hard to take
the Bulldogs seriously when they nearly lose to one of the country's
worst teams (Auburn) in their home gym. Mississippi State defeated the
Tigers 91-88 on Saturday. Defense is clearly an issue for Rick
Stansbury's squad, as four of the Bulldogs' last five opponents have
eclipsed the 70-point plateau. And Arkansas scored 98 points in a
victory over Mississippi State last month.

 

[bigdawg22.sixpack]

This years team is so different than MSU teams in the past. Stans is normally a great defensive coach. Personally, I think this is just our style of ball this year. We are lacking depth and our guys seem to take defensive possessions off to get their breath back. The fact that our opponents avg. 13 free throws a game (or whatever it is) makes me think our coaches are telling our guys to just not foul, even if it means giving up an easy basket. After our first 6 or 7 guys we don't have anyone that can score and it is more valuable for our players not to foul out than play aggressive defense and risk our top scorers fouling out.

 

[Seinfeld]

The way we shot the ball from 3-pt range on Sat, we should have won by 20. However, every time we time we put one in, Suburn came right back down the court and either hit an open jumper or drew a foul to kill the momentum. It didn't help that Auburn was shooting 85% from the line with about 2 minutes to go also.

For a while, I was thinking that teams were simply getting up to play us since everyone wants to knock off a ranked team. However, it's becoming a trend that we just can't seem to put away bad teams, even at home. All I know is that we have a way of making some pretty terrible teams look great.

 

[fishwater99]

Since he has been gone our defensive effort has not been there... I really think it might have been him, not Stans working on defense.
Saturday, we went to that damn Stall, instead of trying to blow them out, and it almost cost us the win..