Show Me My Opponent, 2024 SEC Tournament: Mississippi State
You again! Again!
After a Thursday afternoon win in what can only be described as “one of the basketball games I have watched,” 9-seed Mississippi State moves on to play 1-seed Tennessee in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals. These two tangled at Mississippi State over two months ago in a tight Tennessee loss, which was a pretty meaningful game in two aspects:
It remains one of two Mississippi State Quadrant 1 wins after Thanksgiving (2-7 overall) and one of just three Quad 1/2 wins in SEC play;
It was the game that Dalton Knecht officially figured things out, scoring 26 in the second half after two in the first. He went on to score 20+ in all but four of Tennessee’s remaining SEC games.
Mississippi State is more or less ‘in’ after staving off LSU yesterday, which stopped a four-game skid and indeed allows them to be the lone team in this game not coming off of a loss. Tennessee’s home loss to Kentucky was only important in the sense that it injected some doubt into the race for the NCAA Tournament’s final 1 seed, but otherwise it was largely inconsequential.
This one’s consequential. A Tennessee loss locks them into a 2 seed and eliminates what’s probably their best chance in recent history to get a 1. It would also instill a lot of doubt about the run to come. A Mississippi State loss doesn’t present similar extreme consequences but when your biggest accomplishment of the last five games is not losing one of them, you’re probably still serious bubble material. A win here would fully lock them in; a loss puts them squarely in the First Four talk. Should be intense, which is how literally every game from here on out is gonna feel. Buckle up.
BEHIND THE WALL ($): BELL BELL BELL