Tulane bounced back from its first loss of the season by winning its last three games.
Mississippi State was on the verge of bouncing back from its first loss of the season. A stunning comeback from Southern gave the Bulldogs a second straight loss instead.
The Green Wave (6-1) and Mississippi State (6-2) will meet Saturday morning in Holiday Hoopsgiving in Atlanta.
Collin Holloway scored a career-high 26 points and all five starters finished in double figures as Tulane posted an 89-81 win over Fordham last Sunday.
The Green Wave have shot better than 50 percent from the floor in six of seven games and lead the American Athletic Conference in scoring (88.4 points per game). That’s rather impressive considering preseason all-AAC guard Jaylen Forbes has been slowed by a hamstring injury.
“What I like is it doesn’t matter who scores,” Tulane coach Ron Hunter told NOLA.com. “Forbes has done a great job getting other people involved and not pressing. There were times in the past when if Jaylen didn’t score 17, we weren’t winning. It just shows you how far we’ve come offensively.”
The Bulldogs were ranked 21st in the country after winning their first six games. Then came a 67-59 loss to Georgia Tech on Nov. 28.
Mississippi State coach Chris Jans said the four days leading up to the game against Southern was “plenty of time to stew on .. dissect (and) grow from” the loss to Yellow Jackets.
The Bulldogs then held a 12-point lead over the Jaguars with less than six minutes remaining before Southern closed with a 15-2 run in a 60-59 victory.
“This is going to stay with us all year long, there’s no way around it,” Jans said. “We’re going to have to figure out how we move forward as a group, and it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be tough. It’s going to challenge the fabric of the program.”
–Field Level Media