STARKVILLE, Miss. – Jacksonville State women's basketball suffered its third loss of the season's opening week on Sunday afternoon in an 84-45 loss at Mississippi State. The No. 25 Bulldogs led by a dozen at the half and used a quick start to the third period to pull away in Starkville, Miss.
"In the first half, I thought we competed," head coach
Rick Pietri said. "We couldn't score in the first quarter at all, but we held them at 15 so we defended well enough to be competitive. In the second quarter we cut it to eight and went into the locker rooms only down 12, and we talked about the fact that we were competitive with a very good team and that we needed to compete coming out of the locker room. We just never competed in the second half."
Mississippi State (3-0) wasted little time producing in front of a great crowd at Humphrey Coliseum, scoring 15 points and holding Jax State (0-3) to just two made field goals in the opening ten minutes. The Gamecocks had better luck offensively in the second. Pietri's squad shot 41.2% from the field, including a trio of made threes, and went on an 8-0 scoring run to cut the deficit to eight. A couple of late buckets from the Bulldogs made it a 33-21 difference at the break.
Although the second period ended rather well for the Red-and-White, the beginning of the second half turned into a disaster. A 16-0 run to open the third helped Mississippi State build a 28-point advantage. Jax State would score some on their own, but they could not make up for the poor start and trailed 63-34 going into the final stanza. The fourth quarter saw the Bulldogs tally the frame's first nine points before cruising to an 84-45 win.
Keiara Griffin,
Jaz Spencer, and
Samiya Steele each had eight points in the loss.
Mya Barnes had a team-best five rebounds and
Madison McCoy grabbed three boards. Spencer's three assists served as the most for Jax State as well.
The Gamecocks were out-shot 57.7% (30-of-52) to 32.1% (18-of-56) from the field and made seven threes in the loss. Mississippi State scored 50 points in the paint and added 23 points off 16 forced turnovers.
Jacksonville State will enjoy a few days off before their next contest, which will be the 2023-24 home opener. That game versus Alabama-Huntsville will tip of at 6:30 p.m. Friday at Pete Mathews Coliseum and it will be broadcast on ESPN+.
"I want to see us improve because we just haven't improved," Pietri said. "We've played a week, and it's been a hard week, but nonetheless you'd like to see improvement. You could credit the way we played in the first half to some improvement, but we just have to go back to the drawing board and see what we look like."
Links to watch or follow along with live stats for that game will be provided at JaxStateSports.com. In addition, score updates will be posted on Jax State Women's Basketball's X account (@JaxStateWBB).
To stay up-to-date with the Gamecocks, follow their Facebook (Jacksonville State Women's Basketball), Instagram (@JaxStateWBB), and X (@JaxStateWBB) accounts.
