Lady Bulldogs drop decision to Tennessee
January 17th, 2009 Posted in NCAA basketball newsMississippi State appeared to be in good position to make history Thursday night.
The Lady Bulldogs held a lead with under three minutes to go and looked to be well on their way to knocking off Tennessee for the first time in school history. But it was not meant to be as in typical Lady Vol fashion they rallied back on a 9-0 run to finish the game with a 63-56 win in front of the fifth largest womens crowd of 4,629 at Humphrey Coliseum.
Coming into this game, we anticipated a real, real challenge, said Tennessee head coach Pat Summitt. We have to give Mississippi State a lot of credit. It was a hard-fought game on the part of both teams. I thought both teams had good plays and made significant runs. This Mississippi State team is one of Coach (Sharon) Fannings best teams. Watching them, coming in, I thought it could go down to the wire and, obviously, it did.
The Lady Bulldogs dropped to 0-29 all-time against Tennessee.
Im ticked right now and these kids are hurting because we wanted to win and play hard, Fanning said. But it comes down to how hard did we play every possession and how hard did we talk every single possession. Weve got to want it. We have to prepare harder. We talked about toughness and the harder we prepare then the harder it is to lose. Weve got to have every possession where we are determined to get in somebodys stuff and work hard enough to out-work somebody for 40-minutes or however long it takes.
The Lady Vols, who improved to 13-3 on the year and 2-1 in the Southeastern Conference, shot only 33.9-percent on the night but lit it up from behind the arc nailing 7-of-13 3-point attempts.
Shekinna Stricklen made only 2-of-11 shots but made the go-ahead trey with 1:45 to go to lift Tennssee to victory. Stricklen was also 10-of-10 from the charity stripe to lead the team with 15 points.
Angie Bjorklund also added 14 points while Alyssia Brewer came off the bench to add 10 points and six rebounds in 27 minutes of play.
The Lady Bulldogs began the game with sharp shooting from the outside hitting 4-of-8 from beyond the arc in the first half and only trailed 32-30 at the half. But the shots just werent falling in the second half of play as they hit just 1-of-6 from 3-point land.
State finished the game shooting 36.2-percent from the floor and were outrebounded 42-38 by the Lady Vols.
All I know is that as a team we wanted to win, said MSU senior Robin Porter. We just needed to stay together and play basketball. It didnt go our way, but that just tells us we need to look at film together to find out what went wrong.
Alexis Rack and Chanel Mokango led the Lady Bulldogs with 15 points each. Rack drained three treys on the evening while Mokango grabbed seven rebounds and blocked seven shots.
Porter finished the evening with 12 points and one rebound shy of a double-double.
The loss dropped Mississippi State to 13-4 on the year and 1-2 in league play. The Lady Bulldogs will be back in action on Sunday at Kentucky at 3 p.m.
