It has not been an easy or fun week for Ole Miss and Mississippi State’s men’s basketball teams.

In Oxford, Ole Miss is mired in a six-game losing streak that led longtime head coach Andy Kennedy to announce that this would be his last season. The next day, the Rebels were drubbed by Arkansas.

Meanwhile, in Starkville, Mississippi State had its NCAA Tournament hopes take a major hit with last-second losses road losses to Missouri and Vanderbilt.

One of them will break out of their blues Saturday night when they face each other at Humphrey Coliseum in Starkville.

“It is never easy for Ole Miss in Humphrey Coliseum. I don’t anticipate anything but a battle on Saturday night,” Kennedy said in his postgame press conference following Tuesday’s 75-54 loss to Arkansas.

That was the tamest thing Kennedy had to say. His Rebels (11-15, 4-9 Southeastern Conference) have lost eight of their last nine games overall and appear headed toward the first losing season in Kennedy’s 12 years as coach.

Kennedy announced Monday that he would resign at the end of the season. After the loss to Arkansas he said he thought that would remove a major distraction during a disappointing season, but that it appears initially to have backfired.

“I thought it would take some pressure off of them, so the narrative wasn’t about what is happening with the coach and the future of the program, but that it would just be about basketball and having fun,” Kennedy said. “I have tried to encourage them to play with life. Play the game that you love and has enabled you to be on an SEC team. I have not done a good enough job of either getting that point across or conveying the importance of regret. Tonight, literally, I have never seen anything like it.”

The season has gone a lot better for Mississippi State (18-8, 6-7), but the past week was still a letdown after the Bulldogs had played their way onto the NCAA Tournament bubble.

First, the Bulldogs rallied from a 12-point deficit in the final minute to force overtime at Missouri — and then lost on a late 3-pointer in the extra period.

Then, on Wednesday night, they staged another big comeback only to leave disappointed. After overcoming an 11-point deficit in the second half, Vanderbilt’s Riley LaChance hit a 3-pointer with .5 seconds left to beat the Bulldogs 81-80.

Xavian Stapleton had hit one of two foul shots to give Mississippi State an 80-78 lead with six seconds left.

“The last play of the game was obviously very frustrating because we left the ball open and (LaChance) made an uncontested 3,” Bulldogs coach Ben Howland said. “We had four guys back on the shot, but mistakes are made.”

The Bulldogs fell to 1-7 on the road this season. That, coupled with a lack of quality wins against top-ranked teams and an RPI ranking of 70, might have pushed them off the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Mississippi State has not been to the Tournament since 2009. It has five regular-season games left, including two against RPI Top 20 teams Texas A&M and Tennessee. Winning those, as well as the three against struggling teams from Ole Miss, South Carolina and LSU, are a must to propel them back into the running for an NCAA berth.

“I’m not looking at negatives. I’m looking at the positives,” Howland said in his postgame press conference on Wednesday. “Obviously I’m disappointed that we lost both of these games on the road, and in both games we had leads late. Obviously, we’ve got to learn from the adversity and grow from them.”