Mississippi State is back in the AP Top 25.
The No. 19 Bulldogs (11-1) jumped into the rankings last week as they were preparing to face Bethune-Cookman on Monday night in Starkville, Miss.
Mississippi State was unranked in the preseason poll and stayed in the rankings for just one week in both of its previous appearances. But it’s coming off a performance that suggests it might have some staying power with the start of Southeastern Conference play looming. The visiting Bulldogs won decisively against then-No. 21 Memphis 79-66 on Dec. 21.
Bulldogs coach Chris Jans said “it’s too early to say” whether his team’s most recent performance was indicative of what might be the norm going forward, but he was encouraged by it.
“Our guys haven’t played the same every time out,” Jans said. “I mean no disrespect to anyone else we’ve played, but it’s a different competition (against ranked teams). I’ve liked how we’ve played to this point, but who knows how it’ll unfold.”
The Bulldogs routed another top-20 opponent when they defeated then-No. 18 Pitt 90-57 on Dec. 4 in Starkville.
“We’re certainly happy that we’ve played our best against the best competition because, in (the SEC), this is what we’re going to face every night,” Jans said. “It’s been well-documented where the SEC is at compared to every other conference this year. Now, can we do it over the course of 10 weeks, where it’s like this every single time?”
The games against ranked teams are going to start coming with more regularity because there are 10 SEC teams in the current Top 25.
“Heading into this season, we had a few goals,” forward Cameron Matthews said. “One of them is to try and to compete for a (conference) championship. We felt like we could compete in the SEC. I think we were able to prove it (against Memphis).”
The Bulldogs used a 13-0 run to grab an 18-5 lead at Memphis, and they never led by fewer than 10 points the rest of the way. Riley Kugel scored 19 points off the bench, and team leader Josh Hubbard (17.6 ppg) added 13.
Bethune-Cookman (3-9) also is looking forward to seeing how it’ll stack up in its conference — the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
“We’ve got a lot of depth and we have age and experience,” head coach Reggie Theus said earlier this season.
The Wildcats have seven active players averaging double-figure minutes and they feature two graduates, two seniors and three juniors.
They are led by a high-scoring trio of guards Brayon Freeman (16.0) and Trey Thomas (12.3) and forward Reggie Ward Jr. (11.7).
Ward and Freeman scored 14 points apiece and Thomas added 12 in the team’s most recent game, a 76-63 loss at Davidson on Dec. 21.
Bethune-Cookman has prepared for conference play with a series of games against power-conference opponents in Texas Tech, Nebraska, Minnesota, Virginia and West Virginia.
Theus said “the difficult thing” about the pre-conference schedule has been molding 11 new players into a cohesive team.
“That’s the bottom line,” he said. “We have everything else in place. I’m real excited about where we could end up.”
–Field Level Media
