Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s wild 95-90 win over Mississippi State
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Game day: No. 6 Kentucky 95, No. 14 Mississippi State 90
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss.
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Five things you need to know from No. 6 Kentucky’s 95-90 win over No. 14 Mississippi State in men’s SEC basketball in Starkville:
1. The “Jaxson Robinson Game.” In the three Kentucky games prior to Saturday night’s, Robinson, the UK swingman, had combined to score 27 points.
In Starkville, Robinson dropped 27 points on the Bulldogs. The 6-foot-6, 192-pound super-senior made nine of 12 shots, seven of 10 treys and both his free throws.
Robinson helped Kentucky take a 49-44 halftime lead by scoring 16 first-half points, including four of five 3-pointers.
However, his biggest bucket came with 1:05 left in the game and UK clinging to a 91-90 edge.
After the MSU defense ran Robinson off the 3-point line, he drove into a an open mid-range jumper. Robinson drilled it to give the Cats a 93-90 advantage.
For a player whose confidence had seemed to waver a bit early in the SEC play, it was a showing worthy of boffo reviews.
2. At last, Kentucky “looks like Kentucky” on the road. The most distressing thing about UK’s losses at Clemson and at Georgia in the Wildcats’ first two “true” road contests of 2024-25 wasn’t the outcome.
It was that the Wildcats were unable to play their normal game in either venue.
That’s why the performance at Mississippi State was more valuable than just a positive outcome.
Finally, UK played the same way in a visiting venue that we have been accustomed to watching at Rupp Arena this year.
The Cats were able to get into their offensive sets. As a result, Kentucky hit 34 of 61 shots (55.7%).
UK at last shot the trey with accuracy on the road, as the Cats made 16 of 32.
Of its 34 made field goals, Kentucky assisted on 21.
Perhaps best of all, the balance that makes UK a difficult team to defend when the Wildcats are “on” was much in evidence at MSU.
The Cats had six players in double figures. Besides Jaxson Robinson’s 27, Otega Oweh (15 points, eight rebounds), Andrew Carr (13 points, six boards), Ansley Almonor (11 points, three humongous 3-pointers down the stretch), Amari Williams (10 points, 12 rebounds, six assists, two blocks) and Lamont Butler (10 points, eight assists, no turnovers) all came up huge for Kentucky.
3. On the road in the SEC. Because of the well-documented depth of quality teams in the SEC, the expectation entering league play would be that road wins would be exceedingly difficult to come by.
That certainly appeared to be the case on Jan. 4, when visiting teams went 1-7 on the first Saturday of conference action.
However, since then, road teams have gone 10-6 in SEC games.
On Saturday, Kentucky was joined by Alabama (at Texas A&M), Auburn (at South Carolina), Tennessee (at Texas) and Florida (at Arkansas) in winning on the road.
4. Mark Pope reaches a coaching milestone. Interestingly, both coaches came into Saturday night’s game needing one win to reach 200 career victories.
Having gotten the milestone win, Kentucky’s Mark Pope is now 200-111 as a college head man.
Pope went 77-56 as head coach at Utah Valley (2015-19), 110-52 at BYU (2019-24) and is now 13-3 in his first season coaching at UK.
Mississippi State’s Chris Jans is now 199-73.
Jans went 21-12 at Bowling Green (2014-15), 122-32 at New Mexico State (2017-22) and is now 56-29 at MSU.
It seems fitting that Pope and Jans went against each other for their 200th career win, because they have shared history.
Both coaches have roots in the Western Athletic Conference. In the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons, both head men overlapped in the WAC with Pope at Utah Valley and Jans at New Mexico State.
In four meetings during their WAC days, Jans and NMSU prevailed over Pope and Utah Valley three times.
Pope got some memorable revenge in the coaches’ first SEC meeting.
5. UK in its most recent 20 games vs. each SEC foe: Going into Saturday night’s game in Starkville, Kentucky had beaten Mississippi State in 19 of the prior 20 meetings.
Including the latest UK win over MSU, this is how the Wildcats have fared in their 20 most recent games versus each current Southeastern Conference team:
▪ Alabama: 13-7.
▪ Arkansas: 13-7.
▪ Auburn: 14-6.
▪ Florida: 15-5.
▪ Georgia: 17-3.
▪ LSU: 15-5.
▪ Mississippi: 17-3.
▪ Mississippi State: 19-1.
▪ Missouri: 15-3 (Tigers joined SEC in 2012-13).
▪ Oklahoma 3-0 (Sooners are new to the SEC in 2024-25).
▪ South Carolina: 13-7.
▪ Tennessee: 10-10.
▪ Texas: 2-0 (Longhorns are new to the SEC in 2024-25).
▪ Texas A&M 13-6 (Aggies joined SEC in 2012-13).
▪ Vanderbilt: 17-3.
This story was originally published January 11, 2025 at 10:57 PM.
