Favorite Bulldog Moments of 2016: No. 11 - Quinndary Weatherspoon’s Game Winning Shot against Vanderbilt

There weren’t a lot of wins for the Mississippi State Bulldogs Men’s Basketball team in 2016. But what did happen was the emergence of Quinndary Weatherspoon.

We all thought Malik Newman would be the break out star for Mississippi State in the 2015-16 season, but for a variety of reasons, it never happened. Now he’s sitting out this season on the bench in Kansas due to transfer rules. Quinndary Weatherspoon brought what most of us thought we were going to get from Malik Newman.

There were a lot of great moments from Quinndary Weatherspoon throughout the last basketball season. But none of them rank any higher than this shot against Vanderbilt.

What made this moment even better was just how improbable it got to a point where Weatherspoon would actually have an opportunity to hit a game winner. The Bulldogs trailed virtually the entire game, and they trailed big.

With just under 14 minutes to play in the game, the Bulldogs were trailing the Vanderbilt Commodores by 17 points. The team slowly began to chip away at the lead, and found themselves with the a chance to win it on the last possession.

The fact that Malik Newman, the player who never lived up to expectations, had a chance to win the game, but missed badly only to have Weatherspoon do what he could not might have been the best illustration of how the year went for both players.

The Vanderbilt Commodores had the better season. They were one of the last teams to make it into the NCAA Tournament, but this game might have been foreshadowing that the long term outlook was brighter for the team that had a player who hit a huge shot.