Connect with us

Mississippi

Men’s Basketball: Mississippi State overcomes ugly start in win over Prairie View A&M

Published

on

Men’s Basketball: Mississippi State overcomes ugly start in win over Prairie View A&M


STARKVILLE — Chris Jans would have preferred not to need Cameron Matthews on Sunday.

Mississippi State’s head coach said the fifth-year senior forward has been dealing with a foot injury for “weeks,” and that Matthews had not touched a basketball since Wednesday night’s win over Pittsburgh. But with the Bulldogs chasing the lead for almost the entire first half against Prairie View A&M, Jans broke glass in case of emergency and inserted Matthews into the game.

Matthews looked hobbled at times but played nearly all of the second half as MSU rallied for a 91-84 win over the scrappy Panthers after trailing by as many as 15 points early. He and the Bulldogs will have five days off before taking the court again Saturday against McNeese in Tupelo.

“I didn’t want to necessarily play him, but he was going to be available if we thought we needed him to win this game,” Jans said. “We decided to make the decision, and he certainly had a big impact on the game. He changed the tenor of the game at the end of the first half and the minutes he played in the second half.”

Advertisement

Prairie View entered Sunday with the worst scoring defense among 355 Division I teams, allowing 98.5 points per game. MSU (8-1) had just 14 points 10 minutes into the game and missed 11 of their first 16 shots before finding their rhythm.

The far bigger issue for the Bulldogs, though, was on the defensive end. The Panthers (1-8) made six straight shots early in the game and used a 13-0 run to build a 27-12 lead as MSU’s defensive intensity from its blowout of Pitt four days earlier was nowhere to be found. Prairie View made 56.4 percent of its shots for the game and finished 10-for-19 from 3-point range.

“It was not a very good performance defensively,” Jans said. “They have good players, and when you give good players confidence, anything can happen. Some of it was that, some of it was just guys not being where they should be positionally. The early success they had against us gave their team confidence, gave their staff confidence, and they rode that.”

The Bulldogs gradually reeled the Panthers back in over the last 10 minutes of the first half. A Josh Hubbard 3-pointer cut the MSU deficit to two with just more than a minute left, and Claudell Harris Jr.’s baseline jumper tied the game going into the break.

Hubbard shook off a slow start and led all scorers with 25 points, while Harris had 21 on 6-for-9 shooting. Each finished with 16 second-half points, including seven apiece during a 14-1 run that turned a one-point deficit into a 12-point Bulldogs lead.

Advertisement

“I have a lot of talented teammates,” Harris said. “I see them work hard day in and day out, so (it’s about) trusting that they’re going to make plays for themselves, make plays for me. I’m just focusing on the defense, and it came to me tonight.”

Shawn Jones Jr., making his fourth start of the season, had 11 points, and Michael Nwoko and RJ Melendez added 10 each. Nwoko recorded his second straight double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds in just 16 minutes. Matthews, after checking in for the first time with four minutes and 10 seconds left in the first half, ended up playing 22 minutes and finished with six points, seven rebounds and six assists.

MSU overcame a trio of strong offensive performances from Prairie View — Nick Anderson had 21 points, Tanahj Pettaway added 20 and was 4-for-5 from distance, and Marcel Bryant chipped in with 19. Panthers starting post player Ryan Bolton Jr., though, fouled out with nearly 16 minutes remaining in the second half.

Last season on an early December Sunday afternoon, the Bulldogs blew a late 11-point lead and lost to SWAC member Southern, but this year’s group managed to avoid a bad loss at the same juncture of the season.

“(We were) just trying to do anything we can to help each other win and not giving up,” Jones said. “Last year, we gave up and we thought it was going to be a cakewalk. We came in this year and did the same thing. We just had a different mindset toward the end of the game, and that was just staying together, sticking together, and playing our basketball.”

Advertisement

Mississippi State men’s basketball MSU

Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 50 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.



Source link

Advertisement

Mississippi

Mississippi Lottery Mississippi Match 5, Cash 3 results for Jan. 13, 2026

Published

on

Mississippi Lottery Mississippi Match 5, Cash 3 results for Jan. 13, 2026


play

The Mississippi Lottery offers several draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at Jan. 13, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Mississippi Match 5 numbers from Jan. 13 drawing

01-06-11-25-30

Advertisement

Check Mississippi Match 5 payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Cash 3 numbers from Jan. 13 drawing

Midday: 7-4-3, FB: 2

Evening: 1-6-7, FB: 3

Check Cash 3 payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Cash 4 numbers from Jan. 13 drawing

Midday: 2-1-0-2, FB: 2

Advertisement

Evening: 2-5-3-8, FB: 3

Check Cash 4 payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Cash Pop numbers from Jan. 13 drawing

Midday: 03

Evening: 14

Check Cash Pop payouts and previous drawings here.

Advertisement

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

Story continues below gallery.

Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your lottery prize

Winnings of $599 or less can be claimed at any authorized Mississippi Lottery retailer.

Prizes between $600 and $99,999, may be claimed at the Mississippi Lottery Headquarters or by mail. Mississippi Lottery Winner Claim form, proper identification (ID) and the original ticket must be provided for all claims of $600 or more. If mailing, send required documentation to:

Advertisement

Mississippi Lottery Corporation

P.O. Box 321462

Flowood, MS

39232

If your prize is $100,000 or more, the claim must be made in person at the Mississippi Lottery headquarters. Please bring identification, such as a government-issued photo ID and a Social Security card to verify your identity. Winners of large prizes may also have the option of setting up electronic funds transfer (EFT) for direct deposits into a bank account.

Advertisement

Mississippi Lottery Headquarters

1080 River Oaks Drive, Bldg. B-100

Flowood, MS

39232

Mississippi Lottery prizes must be claimed within 180 days of the drawing date. For detailed instructions and necessary forms, please visit the Mississippi Lottery claim page.

Advertisement

When are the Mississippi Lottery drawings held?

  • Cash 3: Daily at 2:30 p.m. (Midday) and 9:30 p.m. (Evening).
  • Cash 4: Daily at 2:30 p.m. (Midday) and 9:30 p.m. (Evening).
  • Match 5: Daily at 9:30 p.m. CT.
  • Cash Pop: Daily at 2:30 p.m. (Midday) and 9:30 p.m. (Evening).

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Mississippi editor. You can send feedback using this form.



Source link

Continue Reading

Mississippi

The synagogue means something special to Southern Jews — which makes the Mississippi arson that much darker

Published

on

The synagogue means something special to Southern Jews — which makes the Mississippi arson that much darker


The arsonist who confessed to burning a synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, told police he targeted the building because of its “Jewish ties.”

Advertisement

What an odd phrase, I thought. As if there was nothing more than a flimsy connection between the building he aimed to destroy and the living tradition contained within it.

For those of us raised in one of the small Jewish communities scattered across the South, nothing could be further from reality. I grew up in Louisiana, attending a Reform temple that was very similar to the one the arsonist called a “synagogue of Satan.” Baton Rouge, like Jackson, isn’t a small town, but both cities’ Jewish communities aren’t big enough for a day school or a kosher butcher. There’s no mikveh, and no chevra kadisha. Like so many other tiny communities scattered throughout the region, we did not have a Jewish Community Center, a Jewish bookstore or a Jewish museum.

And so our synagogues had to be everything to everyone, all at once.

We listened to the blast of the shofar in the same auditorium where we giggled late into the night at youth group lock-ins. We learned our first Hebrew words in the same classroom where we organized against KKK Grand Wizard David Duke’s political campaigns. We played fierce basketball games against each other in the same space where we came together to mourn the murder of Yitzhak Rabin.

The synagogue gave us our only access to kosher corned beef sandwiches and parent-approved teenage crushes; our only chance to sit in a sukkah or watch our fingernails glow in the flames of a Havdalah candle; our only opportunity to hear firsthand testimony from Holocaust survivors.

Advertisement

As Jewish minorities in the Bible Belt, some of us encountered open antisemitism; others simply learned what it meant to feel subtly, but perpetually, like an outsider. We were navigating a world where “Merry Christmas” was the default greeting and our sports teams recited the Lord’s Prayer before every game. Where we had to explain, again, why we missed school for Yom Kippur. The synagogue was where we went to feel completely at ease in our Jewish skin.

This is another part of what makes Southern Judaism so unique: just like their members, the synagogues themselves form an incredibly tight-knit network, so we have all spent time in one another’s sanctuaries and social halls. Reading coverage of the fire, I was bemused but not surprised to learn that the temple president is an old camp friend.

Decades ago, I celebrated friends’ bar and bat mitzvahs at Beth Israel and spent weekends there for North American Federation of Temple Youth conclaves. Now, my daughter is invited to those friends’ children’s rites of passage, sitting in the same pews where we once whispered loudly to each other behind tattered prayerbooks. For so many of us, Sunday’s fire was not just another horrific act of antisemitism. It was an attack on our very identity, an attempt to destroy the place where it has been formed, practiced and passed down for generations.

But Southern synagogues have survived violence and trauma before. And in the wake of this outrage, I take comfort in the fact that so often, when tragedy has stricken, we have been comforted and cared for not only by fellow Jews across the region but also by allies of other faiths.

When a hurricane rendered my childhood synagogue unusable, the Baptist church next door offered us their space for High Holiday services. Without being asked, they draped large cloths over the crosses in the sanctuary so that we would feel more comfortable. After the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, the imam of the local mosque reached out to our rabbi to invite the congregation to an interfaith service of prayer and peace.

Advertisement

And so it has been in the aftermath of the Jackson fire. Within hours, faith leaders from across the city had reached out, offering the dislocated Jewish community their spaces for services. Outside the charred entrance, bouquets of flowers lay on the ground. Someone left a simple note: “I’m so very sorry.”

The arsonist may have aimed to sever the “Jewish ties” Jackson Jews have to their community’s physical home, to the holy books and sacred artifacts kept inside it. But he grossly underestimated so much: our long legacy of resilience; the unbreakable commitment we have to our faith and our values; and most importantly, the Jewish — and Southern — tradition of caring for one’s neighbor, of standing arm in arm to overcome injustice and hatred.





Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Mississippi

What we know about the alleged arson at Mississippi’s largest and oldest synagogue | CNN

Published

on

What we know about the alleged arson at Mississippi’s largest and oldest synagogue | CNN


It’s the oldest synagogue in Mississippi, a thriving religious center that has served Jackson’s small but vibrant Jewish community for more than half a century.

Now, the Beth Israel synagogue is indefinitely closed, its historic interiors blackened with ash, after authorities say a man set a fire in the building’s library in the early hours of Saturday morning. The FBI says the suspect confessed to attacking the historic synagogue “due to (the) building’s Jewish ties.”

This is the second time the synagogue, which serves a congregation first established in Jackson in 1860, has been attacked with fire, according to its website. In 1967, the building was bombed by members of the Klu Klux Klan, who also bombed the rabbi’s home just months later. The building is also home to the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, which supports Jewish communities in 13 southern states.

The 19-year-old suspect in Saturday’s attack was arrested at a hospital after his father called the FBI, saying his son confessed to him. Location data from a family tracking app helped corroborate his confession.

Advertisement

No one else is believed to have been inside the building and no injuries have been reported from the fire.

Stephen Spencer Pittman has been charged with “arson of property used in interstate commerce or used in an activity affecting interstate commerce,” according to a criminal complaint filed Monday.

Pittman’s father contacted the FBI Saturday and told the agency his son had confessed to setting the building on fire, says the complaint.

The suspect was found at a local hospital with non-life-threatening burn injuries, Charles Felton, chief of investigations for the Jackson Fire Department’s Arson Investigation Division said.

A public defender was appointed to represent the 19-year-old at his first court appearance Monday afternoon. He appeared in federal court via video call from his hospital bed, with both his hands visibly bandaged, according to The Associated Press.

Advertisement

He said he had graduated high school and attended three semesters of college, reports the AP.

Pittman was released to the custody of the US Marshals Service and is scheduled to appear in court again on January 20, court records show.

If Pittman is convicted, he could face anywhere between five and 20 years in prison, the Department of Justice said in a news release. He acted alone, according to the DOJ.

CNN has reached out to Pittman’s public defender for comment.

CCTV footage shows someone started a fire inside the synagogue early Saturday morning, according to the criminal complaint. The document includes an image showing a “hooded individual” seen “walking in the interior of the building pouring contents from what appeared to be a gas container.”

Advertisement

Pittman told authorities he first stopped at a gas station to buy the gas he used to set the blaze, according to the complaint. At the gas station, he took the license plate off his vehicle, he told authorities.

Once he was at the building, he used an axe to break one of the synagogue’s windows, poured gas inside, and used a torch lighter to start a fire.

The Jackson Fire Department responded to the fire shortly after 3 a.m., where they found flames billowing from the windows. They requested fire investigators, who classified the blaze as “incendiary” based on “fire patterns and video surveillance.”

Investigators determined the fire started in the synagogue’s library, which sustained extensive damage, and continued toward the sanctuary, Felton said. There is smoke damage throughout the building, he said — so the congregation won’t be able to return for some time.

“The fire resulted in extensive damage to a significant portion of the building and rendered it inoperable for an indefinite period of time,” the criminal complaint says.

Advertisement

Pittman’s confessions, both to his father and to police, were corroborated by location data and physical evidence, the complaint says.

Data from Life360 — an app that provides real time GPS tracking — shows Pittman traveled from his home in Madison County, then stopped at a gas station in Ridgeland before proceeding to the synagogue, according to the complaint.

He texted his father a photo of the rear of the building, says the complaint. He wrote to his father: “There’s a furnace in the back”; “Btw my plate is off”; “Hoodie is on”; and “And they have the best cameras.” When his father pleaded with him to return home, Pittman replied, “I did my research,” says the complaint.

Later in the day, his father saw burns on Pittman’s ankles, hands and face, says the complaint. When he confronted his son, Pittman confessed to lighting a fire inside the building — and laughed as he did so, according to the complaint.

The FBI found a burned cell phone at the synagogue they believe is Pittman’s, as well as a hand torch.

Advertisement

In his interviews with the FBI and other investigators, Pittman called the building the “synagogue of Satan.” He “ultimately confessed to lighting a fire inside the building due to the building’s Jewish ties,” reads the criminal complaint.

He told his father that he “finally got them” when he confessed to the crime, says the complaint.

Zach Shemper, the congregation’s president, told CNN Monday law enforcement informed him the suspect in the arson attack posted antisemitic comments online. He said he hadn’t seen the posts himself.

Attorney General Pam Bondi characterized the attack as a “disgusting act of anti-Semitic violence” in the DOJ’s news release.

Jackson Mayor John Horhn condemned “acts of antisemitism, racism, and religious hatred” in a statement after the attack.

Advertisement

The synagogue sustained significant damage during the attack, and it’s unclear when it’ll be able to reopen.

Photos show the building’s walls and floor covered with ash, with piles of damaged items heaped together.

Several Torah scrolls were destroyed in the fire, according to the American Jewish Committee, which condemned the incident as a “hateful act.”

Shemper said it could take at least a year to repair the building. In the meantime, multiple churches have offered their spaces to Beth Israel.

He said he felt both “sadness” and “anger” when he learned about the blaze.

Advertisement

“When something like this happens so catastrophic, your mind goes 100 miles an hour in every direction you can think of,” Shemper said. “For someone to hurt the safe space that we hold as a congregation, it’s just so detrimental and catastrophic.”

The synagogue served around 170 households as of 2021, according to the Institute for Southern Jewish Life. In addition to providing a home for Jackson’s Jewish community, the institution also served a role in the 20th century civil rights movement. Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, the congregation’s leader from the 1950s to the 70s, supported civil rights activists and helped found an interracial group of clergy to help rebuild Black churches attacked by white supremacists, according to the institute. It was his activism that eventually caught the attention of the KKK, whose members attacked the synagogue and his home, the institute said.

Michele Schipper, one of the congregation’s past presidents, said she was both emotionally distraught and committed to maintaining Jewish community in Jackson.

“I’m devastated,” she said. “We’re all devastated, but we are ready to rebuild, and with the support and outreach from our community, we will continue to be a vibrant Jewish community in Jackson, Mississippi.”

Correction:
An earlier version of this story misidentified the source of the confessions. It was the suspect, Stephen Spencer Pittman, according to court documents.

Advertisement



Source link

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending