Mississippi State Bulldogs Come Up Short Following Best Performance of Season

Following what Gavin Ware stated as "the Bulldogs' biggest conference win in 11 year,." Ben Howland said "their biggest win of the year would be defined by their following performance." Just four days after beating Arkansas (78-46), only one Mississippi State player was able to record more points than shot attempts.

Mississippi State opened the contest by missing 10 of their first 12 shots, after shooting an impressive 60 percent against Arkansas just four days earlier. At the end of the first half, the Bulldogs' had scored only 21 points, half of what they scored in the first twenty - minutes in their routing of the Razorbacks.

Yante Maten scored six straight points to start the second half as Georgia (14-9, 7-5) continued to stretch their lead. Georgia led by as many as 22 points throughout the second half before Mississippi State was able to string together a 10-0 run to cut the deficit to 10 points. Unfortunately for State, this was as close as they would get to Georgia until scoring with only seven seconds left to provide the game's final margin, 66-57.

Georgia's aggressive zone forced State to force up a total of 28 three-point attempts in the loss. Leading scorer, Gavin Ware being in constant foul trouble only compounded problems for the Bulldogs. Ware's first points in the game came with 12:54 remaining in the second half. Ware tied his season-low finishing with only 6 points. Craig Sword also dealt with foul trouble for the majority of the contest.

"It's terrible when two seniors are on the bench," Sword said. "We can't guide the freshmen and the other people on the floor. We've got to do better."

Quinndary Weatherspoon lead Mississippi State with 17 points on 6 of 15 shooting. Seven of his fifteen shot attempts came from behind the three-point line. Craig Sword added 13 points. As a team, The Bulldogs shot an abysmal 30.9 percent for the game.

"I thought Georgia really took it to us on both ends of the floor," said Ben Howland. "We struggled to score and took too many 3s (8 of 28). When you look at our inside presence, we had two free throws attempted total from our four inside guys."

"I thought the physicality Georgia brought tonight and the way they sealed us up inside were real problems for us."

Mississippi State (10-14, 3-9) will look to bounce back this Tuesday when they host Vanderbilt (15-10, 7-5).