Georgia
Mississippi State’s Must-Win Game: 5 Takeaways from the Victory Over Georgia
5. Any landing you can walk away from in a good one
It wasn’t perfect, and it should’ve been easier, but this was a dangerous road game and a key moment for Georgia, and Mississippi State pulled through.
The Starkville Bulldogs had a hard time closing, but after a rough month with so many misfires and inconsistencies, this win showed the toughness late to get out alive.
This was a Saturday afternoon road game in the SEC, and on a day when Auburn lost, Duke fell in an ACC showdown at Clemson, and Marquette lost a Big East battle at Creighton, Mississippi State got the win.
4. The Mississippi State depth was a big deal
It wasn’t so much the way MSU was able to get scoring production off the bench – KeShawn Murphy and Riley Kugel provided a boost – it was how the defense was able to hold up in the end partly because it still had a few fresh bodies left.
Georgia got a few good minutes out of its bench, but for the production wasn’t there. MSU struggled against Silas Demary, but the defense did a great job of keeping Asa Newell in relative check on the inside.
It’s almost mid-February, and the team still has legs. And …
3. Mississippi State hit the boards
Defensive rebounds have been a little bit of an issue. Mississippi State got whacked by Missouri, but allowed just eight offensive rebounds. Before that, allowing offensive boards were a massive issue. For the fifth straight game MSU got outrebounded, but it was only by one, and it only allowed nine Georgia offensive rebounds.
It was a total team effort. Five Georgia players came up with at least two rebounds. Nine Mississippi State players came up with at least two starting with a massive day from KeShawn Murphy, scoring 14 points with a team-high eight boards.
2. What was up with the free throws?
Mississippi State should’ve been able to put this away easier, but it couldn’t do enough from the line. The team was great on the inside, hit 30% from three, and connected on just 33% of its chances on free throws.
There were too many missed chances, too many empty trips, and it turned out to be the second-worst game from the line this season hitting just 6-of-18 chances.
1. Beating Georgia didn’t save the season, but …
Everyone can go ahead and exhale now.
After losing two straight and going 2-5 in the lat seven, this was the first win in regulation since a win at Vanderbilt on January 7th.
There wasn’t any real fear of missing out on the NCAA Tournament, but lose this, and with Florida, at Ole Miss, and Texas A&M up next. there would’ve been a huge problem had Mississippi State not pulled this off.
But it did, it’s 17-6, and this might just be the type of conifdence boost needed for what’s coming next.
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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