RALEIGH, N.C. — Mississippi State’s men’s basketball season ended — again — with some madness in March.
Just not the good kind.

Robert Wright scored 19 points, and Norchad Omier had a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds as No. 9 seed Baylor beat No. 8 Mississippi State 75-72 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament’s East Regional on Friday.

Josh Hubbard led Mississippi State with 26 points and Claudell Harris Jr. scored 13.

Baylor (20-14) advanced to face No. 1 seed Duke in the second round on Sunday. Duke routed Mount St. Mary’s 93-49 in its tournament opener on Friday.

Mississippi State (21-13) lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament for the fifth consecutive time. It has not been to the second round since 2008, and not beyond that since reaching the Final Four in 1996. The last three early exits have been in the past three years under head coach Chris Jans.

“Getting to the NCAA Tournament is still a goal for us every single year, and there’s a lot of teams out there that would trade places with us in a heartbeat for what we’ve accomplished this season and the last three combined,” Jans said. “But at the same time, we’re disappointed. Our goals were higher this year than they’ve ever been. We talked about it in the summer. We talked about it in the fall with you folks, and certainly with our internal meetings that we had. We felt like we had positioned ourself with the experience, with the success, that it was time for more.

“I just talked about it with the team,” Jans continued. “We’ll have different perspective at some point, but right now we didn’t finish. We weren’t able to accomplish the goals that we had set for our team this particular year, so it’s disappointing. It hurts.”

Mississippi State trailed 60-49 with eight minutes to go before making a late charge. It pulled within a point, at 71-70, when Harris was fouled on a 3-point attempt and made all three free throws with 1:19 remaining.

Robert Wright and V.J. Edgecombe each hit two free throws for Baylor, sandwiched around a basket by MSU’s Keshawn Murphy, to make it 75-72 with nine seconds to go.

Mississippi State had the ball and a chance to tie, but Harris missed a 3-pointer with less than a second to go.

“It was a set drawn for really three options,” Hubbard said of the final shot. “Claudell had a good chance. I was coming off a stagger, so it was really whatever the defense gave us. We just reacted to what they threw at us.”