Ole Miss has won three games in a row and clutch plays from Malik Dia and Dre Davis were crucial in the last two.
The No. 19 Rebels (19-6, 8-4 Southeastern Conference) will try to make it four in a row when they host No. 22 Mississippi State (17-7, 5-6) on Saturday in Oxford, Miss.
Dia scored 12 of his 18 points in the final seven minutes of a 72-68 victory at South Carolina on Wednesday. Four days earlier, Davis scored a season-high 22 points, including a tip-in with 0.1 seconds left for a 72-70 road victory against LSU.
“Coming out and playing in that time,” Dia said of the win over South Carolina, “it’s just knowing when it’s time to score, when to be aggressive and get to the paint.”
Dia scored 12 straight Ole Miss points, finishing the run with a 3-pointer that gave his team the lead for good, 69-66 with 2:04 remaining.
Rebels coach Chris Beard called the late-game heroics “a step in the right direction” for Dia, who missed nearly eight minutes of the second half against South Carolina after committing his fourth foul. Dia, a junior forward, was 0-for-6 from the floor and totaled one point in the win over LSU.
“We coach Dia hard,” Beard said. “A lot of players around the country probably wouldn’t want to, or could, take the high expectations we put on him. It’s no reason other than we believe in him. To come out there and have the poise, confidence, belief in himself to play his best in winning time the last four, five or six minutes of the game was a great step for him.”
Dia averages 9.9 points per game and a team-high 5.6 rebounds. Davis is scoring 10.6 a game, while Sean Pedulla leads the Rebels at 14.6.
Mississippi State has been struggling of late, losing three of its last four, including an 81-68 home loss against No. 3 Florida on Tuesday.
That loss featured inconsistent offensive play, which has plagued the Bulldogs during their slide.
“We go through spurts offensively in games that puts us behind the 8-ball,” Mississippi State coach Chris Jans said. “You never know when they’re going to come. Obviously, if we did, we’d do everything we could to avoid it, but we get out of sorts and it’s not one person.”
Jans said it’s inevitable that teams are going to hit periodic rough patches offensively, especially in the SEC, which has nine teams ranked in the AP Top 25.
“You’re going to have stretches where you’re going to have some costly turnovers, some poor shooting, some frustration,” Jans said, “and you’ve got to sprint back and build your defense and rely on that. We’ve had times where that wasn’t the case and it’s proved costly for us.”
The loss to Florida was a prime example of what Jans was talking about. The Bulldogs led by one point at halftime, but eventually they wore down.
“Unfortunately, this team when things aren’t going well offensively, it affects other areas of our game,” Jans said. “Every coach talks about having teams that understand that your mood, your personality, your effort can’t change regardless of what’s happening on the offensive end.”
None of that was problematic when MSU hosted Ole Miss on Jan. 18. The Bulldogs scored the first 11 points of the game, battled throughout and prevailed 84-81 in overtime.
Josh Hubbard tops the Bulldogs at 17.6 points per game, followed by KeShawn Murphy (11.4) and Claudell Harris Jr. (10.0). Murphy pulls down 7.5 boards a game to lead the squad.
–Field Level Media
