#622 ASA TOP PLAY ON 10* Mississippi State -8 over South Carolina, Tuesday at 7 PM ET - Bad spot and bad match up for South Carolina. They are catching MSU coming off 2 road losses vs 2 of the top teams in the nation. The Bulldogs lost @ Kentucky last Tuesday and took the Cats to OT on the road. Then they traveled to Texas Tech and they were out of gas both physically and emotionally after their Kentucky loss. Noticed it very early in the game and Tech rolled up an easy win. Now back at home where MSU is 4-0 in SEC play (11-1 overall) winning by an average of 12.5 points per game in league play. They have a +16 points per game margin in all 12 home games with 9 of their 11 wins coming by double digits. South Carolina is on the road for the 2nd time in 4 days after upsetting Texas A&M on Saturday. In SEC play the Gamecocks have a points per possession margin of -0.4 and MSU is +0.5 in that category. SC ranks 13th in the SEC (league games) in offensive efficiency, 13th in eFG%, and 13th in TO margin where they cough it up a whopping 23% of the time. They are also a poor defensive rebounding team (308th nationally) and MSU is one of the better offensive rebounding teams in the country. Those 2 things alone (TO’s and rebounding) should lead to a bunch of extra possessions for the home team. Since South Carolina is a poor shooting team, they rely on their defense to create TO’s which turn into easy baskets. That’ll be tough here vs the Bulldogs who are #1 in the conference in TO rate giving it away just 16% of the time. The Gamecocks are aggressive defensively thus they foul A LOT. They foul more than any other team in the conference and their opponents % of points from the FT line is nearly 25% which is the 7th most in the entire nation. MSU is a solid FT shooting team at 72% while South Carolina has hit just 59% of their FT’s in conference play. Mississippi State by double digits.