Missouri faces Mississippi State feeling good about road ahead
With three games remaining in the SEC's regular season, Missouri has its eyes on a top-four spot in the conference standings when it faces Mississippi State on Saturday at Starkville, Miss.
The fifth-place Tigers (19-9, 9-6 SEC) are one game behind No. 22 Tennessee, which faces No. 17 Alabama on Saturday. Missouri earned a 73-69 victory at home against the Volunteers on Tuesday.
Missouri opened conference play with an impressive 76-74 victory over defending national champion Florida, stumbled through a 2-4 stretch and now has won five of its last seven games.
"What I see is a team, if you look at since we've had the valuable parts of Trent Pierce and Jayden Stone ... you have a team that's now starting to gel," Missouri head coach Dennis Gates said.
"Trying to figure out roles is no longer. These guys have accepted their roles."
T.O. Barrett, who has averaged 8.8 points per game, notched a career-high 28 points against Tennessee, while Mark Mitchell added 23. Mitchell leads the team in three categories: points (17.4), rebounds (5.4) and assists (3.8).
Stone has averaged 14.1 points and shoots 40.0% (42 of 105) from 3-point range. Pierce adds 10.7 points.
The Tigers have won 18 of 19 games this season when netting at least 73 points.
Despite dropping five of the past seven contests, Mississippi State (13-15, 5-10) still has received plenty of production from Josh Hubbard, who is second in the SEC with 21.6 points per outing. He trails only Darius Acuff Jr. (22.2) of Arkansas.
Hubbard entered Wednesday's 100-75 road blowout defeat at No. 17 Alabama as the conference's leading scorer but produced just 11 points on 4-of-13 shooting in his third-lowest showing thus far.
Defense has been the problem for the Bulldogs. They allow 80.0 points per game, which is 15th in the 16-team league and only ahead of Alabama (83.6).
"It was definitely a buzzsaw, and I don't know if I've ever been involved in a game where the other team had 16 3s and only 4 2s at the end of 20 minutes," Mississippi State head coach head coach Chris Jans after Alabama led 63-33 at halftime and ultimately made 22 of their 50 3-pointers (44.0%).
Jayden Epps is the only other Bulldogs player in double figures, scoring 14.0 points and leading at the foul line at 82.9%.