Morning News: Mississippi St & Ole Miss Suffer Bad Losses; Looking Forward To Better Basketball

Marshall Henderson apparently got into a fight with a razor and lost.

Worst Loss: Mississippi State TCU had not won a road game by double-digits since December 3rd, 2008. That streak ended with a 71-61 win at Mississippi State. It's not worth getting too deep into a game like this, but Mississippi State was mostly undone by bad shooting (3-for-18 behind the arc, 50% at the free throw line). Mississippi State is 6-2, but against a terrible schedule. They have lost both of their games against Pomeroy Top 200 opponents and will enter SEC play without anything close to a quality victory. It's only Rick Ray's second season, but so far there are no signs of improvement.

Nobody is going to confuse this TCU team with a team in contention for the postseason. They lost to Longwood, after all. But in Trent Johnson's second season they're playing better... there are at least a few flickers of hope. With a very young roster, they might actually be fairly decent in a year or two.

Surprisingly Not The Worst Loss: Mississippi On another night this would have been the worst loss, but Mississippi State outdid their in-state rival. A 3 point loss to Kansas State is a big problem, though. Ole Miss came into this game 6-0, but a fraudulent 6-0. Their only wins over the Pomeroy Top 200 came against Georgia Tech (by 10) and Penn State (by 3), and now they fall to a Kansas State team that had already lost to Northern Colorado and Charlotte. This was a classic Marshall Henderson game, in that he shot his team out of contention yet everybody in the media seemed to think that he was going to save the team with a three-pointer late. It was not to be, and he finished 4-for-18 from the field (including 2-for-13 behind the arc). Brutal.

This game doesn't turn Kansas State's season around or anything, but it's a sign that their defense continues to be tough. Only one Kansas State opponent has broken 1 PPP, and they are averaging 0.92 PPP allowed. But their offense has been such a mess that at this point they don't look good enough to finish .500 in the Big 12.

Let's Talk About Tonight From the two games I covered in this morning's news post, you can tell (even if you weren't watching last night) that it was a slow night of basketball. We're going to have quite a few more of these between now and New Year's Eve. So it goes. Anyway, we've got some better basketball tonight, highlighted by Kentucky/Baylor.

Kentucky and Baylor are two teams that have played well and taken care of business against the teams that they're supposed to beat, but neither has a real quality victory yet. Kentucky has a win over Providence and Baylor has wins over Colorado and Dayton. The two teams are similar in strengths and deficiencies, too. Both teams are very athletic and long, but both teams have trouble with parts of the game that don't just rely on being athletic and long (defensive rebounding, preventing threes, FT%). It will be fascinating to see Julius Randle take on the NBA front line of Cory Jefferson and Isaiah Austin. And if Randle gets outplayed, can the Harrison twins take advantage of a mediocre Baylor backcourt to carry Kentucky to a big win? Stay tuned. The game tips off at 10PM eastern on ESPN.