Bulldogs continue spiral with 72-56 loss to Texas A&M in SEC Tournament
Mississippi State women’s basketball faced a must-win game on Thursday to start the SEC Tournament and the Bulldogs fell flat once again.
With projections having the Bulldogs hanging on by a thread for the NCAA Tournament, MSU lost its sixth game in the last seven contests. The latest was a repeat of last year’s SEC Tourney as the Bulldogs were poor on both ends in a 72-56 defeat.
The loss was the fourth-straight in SEC Tournament games for a Bulldog team that was once a regular in the championship game.
It was a game that State couldn’t allow to play out the way that it did. The Bulldogs surrendered 47 second half points to an A&M team that has struggled to score at times this year. The Aggies shot 46% in the game and outrebounded MSU 40-32 while State made just 35% of its shots and was just 5-of-19 from 3-point range.
Jerkaila Jordan scored nine points in the game on just 3-of-13 shooting and had one point in the second half and one rebound. Jessika Carter and Darrione Rogers led the team with 12 points each as Carter also had eight rebounds. Rogers was just 2-of-8 from 3-point range with five rebounds.
The Bulldogs followed up a dud of an SEC Tournament game last year against this same Aggie team by coming out and playing poorly in the first half. MSU (21-11) had just nine points in the first quarter and trailed 14-9. Luckily, the Aggies were shooting just as poorly in the first half and it was just 25-21 at the break.
The third quarter was the backbreaker for State. The Aggies dictated the aggressiveness and the pace in the third frame to go on a 16-3 run at one point and built the lead up to as much as 22 points in the fourth quarter of the game.
The loss has State dangerously close to missing out on the NCAA Tournament despite starting the year 20-5 and sitting at 7-3 in SEC play. No SEC team has ever missed the Big Dance after winning 20 or more games and finishing with a .500 or better record in conference play, but the Bulldogs were in the Last 4 in on ESPN’s Charlie Crème’s projections coming into the game and the 1-6 finish to the season will likely factor.
It will a long wait for State. The Bulldogs won’t find out their fate until 7 p.m. on March 17 with the Selection Show set for an ESPN telecast. The Bulldogs were among the Last 4 in last season and had to take part in a Play-In game to get into the tournament.
