MILWAUKEE – Milan Momcilovic stared at the basket a brief moment before running back on defense, slightly shaking his head. The rim can be unforgiving in March. Mystifying. Even when it’s in your hometown gym.

The former Pewaukee High standout saw just how temperamental the rim can be in his homecoming this weekend for the NCAA tournament. Two days after his scorching shooting led Iowa State to the second round, Momcilovic couldn’t find the net in No. 6 Iowa State’s 91-78 loss Sunday night to No. 6 Mississippi at Fiserv Forum.

The Cyclones’ sophomore forward shot just 2 of 12 from the field, including 1 of 8 behind the three-point arc. He lingered a moment, but only for a moment, after his sixth three-pointer clanged off the rim despite an open look early in the second half. Momcilovic finally drained his first three-pointer from the left corner with less than 5 minutes left, avoiding going scoreless from beyond the arc for only the third time this season.

Mississippi plays a distinctive defense that consists of regularly switching guards onto bigger forwards, and larger players onto guards. The mismatched pattern can disrupt rhythm for an offense, but Momcilovic said he felt his shots were open enough to make more consistently.

“They were being physical,” Momcilovic said. “They put a smaller guy on me, but I just think at the end of the day, I had three or four open looks in the first half. I missed them all. I got one bucket to go in the first half, but just missed four or five open looks in the first half, honestly.

“Then to come out at half and miss two or three looks, it was just tough. I couldn’t get one to go all night, and my team needed me.”

BOX SCORE: Mississippi 91, Iowa State 78

Momcilovic had plenty of company. Iowa State shot 48% from the field, but only 8 of 22 (36%) from behind the arc. The final numbers don’t show how much the Cyclones struggled shooting. Iowa State was just 3 of 11 from behind the three-point line in the first half.

The Cyclones were also just 15 of 23 from the free-throw line, emphasizing their overall shooting woes.

Without second-leading scorer Keshon Gilbert, Iowa State needed a complementary cast – including Momcilovic – to pick up the scoring burden to advance far in this tournament. The sophomore responded in Friday’s first-round win against No. 14 Lipscomb with 20 points, his second most this season. he shot 8 of 14 from the field Friday, including 4 of 8 from three.

Momcilovic finished with just 5 points against the Rebels. It was his fewest in a game since Feb. 11.

“All my teammates tell me to keep shooting,” Mimcilovic said. “The coaches tell me to keep shooting. So I’m going to keep shooting. Because, I mean, that’s what I’m good at. It’s just try to stay confident if the shots aren’t going to go down. If I’m not shooting well, hopefully try to give some energy to my teammates. Hopefully be better, be a cutter, but it is tough when you miss a lot of shots. That mindset, you don’t get a lot of confidence, and it’s tough.”

Mississippi had no problem finding the basket

The rim wasn’t so unkind when Iowa State was on defense. Mississippi shot a blistering 58% from the field, including a matching 58% from three.

After trailing 15-8 with 14:27 left, the Rebels seized control with an extended 20-2 run over the next 6:23. The stretch ended with Mississippi taking a 28-17 lead with 8:24 left in the half.

The Cyclones cut their deficit to 43-34 on a free throw from Joshua Jefferson with 18:21 left, but Rebels forward Jaemyn Brakefield answered with a layup on the next possession. Iowa State wouldn’t pull within single digits again.

“I would say we struggled just to stay in front of our guy guarding the ball,” senior guard Nate Heise said. “Then that put us into rotations. I think that’s where a lot of their 3s came from, was two guys going to the ball and then someone being open on the back side, or something like that.

Mississippi won the turnover battle 15-8, which also led to easier shots in transition. The Rebels outscored the Cyclones 20-7 off turnovers, a 13-point margin that matched a 13-point win.

Chris Beard rebuilding project ahead of schedule

With the win, Mississippi advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2001. The Rebels were the second SEC program to punch their ticket to the Sweet 16 on Sunday night in Milwaukee, joining Kentucky. The No. 3 Wildcats beat No. 6 Illinois in the first game of a doubleheader inside Fiserv Forum.

Rebels coach Chris Beard, who led Texas Tech to the national title game in 2019, was hired last season to rebuild Mississippi’s basketball program. Ending the Sweet 16 drought is a watershed moment for his program.

“It hasn’t been done recently,” Beard said, “but telling these guys what we thought we could do at Ole Miss, they trusted us enough to come. Excited about the players. All my thoughts are on those guys. We came here to win a four-team tournament. So two down. It takes six to win the whole thing. “Told the guys to enjoy this for a half a day, and we will get back to work tomorrow. We’re excited about our next opportunity in the Sweet 16.”

After trailing 15-8 with 14:27 left, the Rebels seized control with an extended 20-2 run over the next 6:23. The stretch ended with Mississippi taking a 28-17 lead with 8:24 left in the half.

The Cyclones cut their deficit to 43-34 on a free throw from Joshua Jefferson with 18:21 left, but Rebels forward Jaemyn Brakefield answered with a layup on the next possession. Iowa State wouldn’t pull within single digits again.

With the win, Mississippi advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2001. The Rebels were the second SEC program to punch their ticket to the Sweet 16 on Sunday night in Milwaukee, joining Kentucky. The No. 3 Wildcats beat No. 6 Illinois in the first game of a doubleheader inside Fiserv Forum.

In his second term as a member of the Mississippi House, Bryant Clark presided over the chamber — a rare accomplishment for a sophomore in a chamber that then and now rewards experience.

The Holmes County Democrat presided in the House as if he were a seasoned veteran.

In a sense he was. Bryant Clark is the son of Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction. Robert Clark rose from being a House outcast to serving three terms as pro tempore, who presides in the absence of the speaker.

With Clark’s death earlier this month at age 96, much has been written and said about Robert Clark, the civil rights icon. While his accomplishments were groundbreaking in the history of the state, the measure of the man is, unbelievably, much more.

Before being elected to the House, Clark was a schoolteacher and landowner in Holmes County. Both of those accomplishments played key roles in Clark’s election in 1967.

As a teacher, Clark went before the all-white Board of Education to ask that the school district participate in a federal program that provided adult literacy classes. The board said it would do so only if the superintendent supported the program.

The superintendent said he did not. Clark said at that time he was going to challenge the superintendent in the next election.

True to his word, Clark went to the Holmes County Courthouse to qualify to run for superintendent. But officials there chuckled, telling Clark that the state House member from Holmes County had changed the law to make the post appointed rather than elected.

Clark, not deterred, chose to run against that state House member, who he defeated in an election that made national news.

At the time, Holmes, like many counties in Mississippi, had a Black-majority population and the times were changing as Blacks were finally granted the right to vote. But that change happened quicker in Holmes because at the time the county had one of the highest percentages of Black property owners in the nation.

Black Mississippians who did challenge the status quo — such as voting or God-forbid running for political office — faced the possibility of violence and economic consequences.

Black residents of Holmes County had at least a little protection from economic consequences because many owned property thanks in large part to government programs and efforts of national groups to help them purchase land.

“It might have just been 40 acres and an old mule, but they said it was their 40 acres and old mule,” Bryant Clark said.

But there is more that makes Robert Clark’s accomplishments notable. As he served in the House under watchful and sometimes hateful eyes as the first Black legislator, he had the added burden of being a single father raising two boys.

When Clark’s wife died in 1977, Bryant Clark was age 3.

The Clark boys essentially grew up at the Capitol. Bryant remembers sitting in the House Education Committee room where his father served as chair (another significant civil rights accomplishment) and listening on the Capitol intercom system to the proceedings in the chamber when the House was in session.

Years later, the father would watch from his home in Holmes County via the internet as his son presided.

“He was proud,” Bryant Clark said, adding his father would at times offer critiques of his rules interpretations.

But Robert Clark probably did not have to offer many critiques. His son most likely learned the rules at least in part through osmosis. At one point, Clark was home schooling his son during the legislative session. But Bryant Clark, now an attorney, said his father was chastised for not enrolling him in school by then-Rep. Alyce Clarke, D-Jackson, the first Black woman elected to the Legislature and childhood friend of Bryant Clark’s late mother.

So to say Clark was a typical sophomore in terms of knowing the rules and the nuances of the Capitol by the time he got to preside would be an understatement.

Bryant Clark recalled then-Speaker Billy McCoy calling him into his office and telling him he was being named vice chair of the Rules Committee for the term beginning in 2008 and most likely would preside as his father had made history by doing.

“He said he expected me to be speaker one day and he would be an old man back at his home in Rienzi reading about me in the newspaper. But times change. The state turned red,” Bryant Clark said.

His son’s speakership would have been another historic chapter for Robert Clark the father and for all of Mississippi.

No. 9 seed Mississippi State topped No. 8 seed Cal, 59-46, in the first round of the 2025 women’s NCAA tournament on Saturday, advancing to the second round on Monday when the Bulldogs will play No. 1 seed USC for a shot at the Sweet 16.

With 10 points, Mississippi State senior guard Jerkaila Jordan was one of three players on her team to finish with double-digit scoring against the Golden Bears. But one of the bigger storylines out of the first-round game was Jordan’s technical foul for taunting.

With less than two minutes left in the first half, Jordan scored and was fouled after stealing the ball from Cal, as the Clarion Ledger noted. Following her layup, she celebrated my miming eating and quickly got a technical.

After the game, Jordan explained to ESPN that she was playing it up for the camera, but officials apparently thought she was taunting too close to a Cal player.

“I was playing to the camera. They said she was under me, but we gon’ eat, you know what I’m saying? … The ref said she was right there, so if she was right there, I respected the refs.”

Mississippi State coach Sam Purcell addressed the technical foul after the game too. Via the Clarion Ledger:

“I think it’s a double-edged sword sometimes,” he said. “I think women aren’t allowed to show the same emotion that men can sometimes. I understand the rule when you’re taunting or you’re trying to personalize it to the opposing team, but my young woman was doing it in front of the camera.”

Our two cents: Let players have fun while playing games.