Coyote men fall hard at Mississippi State

STARKVILLE, MS (Dakota News Now) - Mississippi State held South Dakota to less than 30 percent shooting and turned the Coyotes over 17 times in a 79-42 win Thursday at Humphrey Coliseum at the start of the Fort Myers Tipoff.

Tolu Smith scored 16 points and Cameron Matthews added 14 more on 6-of-6 from the floor to help the Bulldogs move to 4-0. South Dakota got 11 points off the bench from Paul Bruns, but fell to 2-2. The tournament moves to Florida Tuesday where South Dakota faces Long Island.

Mississippi State featured a top-10 defense entering play and backed up those numbers again Thursday. The Bulldogs held the Coyotes to 15 points on 4-of-26 shooting in the first half and took a 23-point lead into halftime. No team has scored more than 54 points against Mississippi State this season.

“We expected it to be tough to score some points tonight, and the huge deal for us was trying to take care of the ball and get good shots,” said USD head coach Eric Peterson. “They scored 30 points off our 17 turnovers and 14 of them were steals, so they did what they are very good at.

“It’s really hard to simulate their length and their pressure in practice, and I told our team that we’re going to play a team in Fort Myers that’s going to be very similar to how they defend. We had some good looks, we just didn’t make them.”

Bruns scored seven of his points in the second half where the Coyotes shot 43 percent from the field (12-of-28). Jeremiah Coleman (five points), Mihai Carcoana (4) and Felix Brostrom (2) also contributed for a bench that produced more than half the team’s points. Kruz Perrott-Hunt had a game-high five assists to go with five points for South Dakota.

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