Surprise, Surprise : Mississippi State Says, ‘We’re No Cinderella’

This was no fairy tale, though you could make a heart-felt film about this amiable squad from the deepest South that keeps discovering improbable paths to glory.

Forrest Dunk?

In a land of blue-grass splendor, the heretofore ignored Mississippi State Bulldogs beat Cincinnati, 73-63, and hacked and smacked their way to the school’s first berth in the Final Four on Sunday, then dismissed any idea that this was the stuff of magic dust and glass slippers.

For those shocked and amazed by their roaring NCAA run, prolonged Sunday by the bruising victory before 23,850 at Rupp Arena--home floor of SEC rival Kentucky--in the Southeast Region final, the Bulldogs have one logical answer:

Check the pedigree.

“We’re no Cinderella story,” said junior forward Dontae’ Jones, who knocked the second-seeded Bearcats off-balance with 17 first-half points, finished with 23 and 13 rebounds, and was named the regional’s most valuable player.

“Look at the season--we did good in the SEC, we beat Kentucky in the SEC tournament, and look at what we’ve done in the NCAAs.

“I can see that a lot of people didn’t believe in us, but we’re definitely not Cinderella.”

Not when the excitable Jones is outscoring Cincinnati in the first minutes by himself, 15-10, not when Mississippi State holds its third consecutive tournament opponent below 35% field-goal shooting, not when the Bulldogs are the last team to have knocked off Kentucky.

On its winding way to Southeast Region victory, Mississippi State (26-7) toughed out a deflating 1-4 stretch in January, pulled it together to win seven of its last nine regular-season games, surged past then-No. 1-ranked Kentucky in the SEC tournament, then beat Virginia Commonwealth, Princeton, and No. 3-ranked, top-seeded Connecticut before Sunday.

“We hit a rough spot early, and everybody kind of dropped us out of sight,” said sophomore point guard Marcus Bullard. “It was like we didn’t exist any more. But we knew it was just going to take time. We knew we could straighten it out.”

And Sunday, to earn a date with Syracuse in the semifinals Saturday in East Rutherford, N.J., the Bulldogs out-rocked and out-rumbled the No. 7-ranked Bearcats, humbling hot tournament shooter Damon Flint into a one-for-12 performance and holding forward Danny Fortson relatively in check.

The ultra-physical Fortson finished with a game-high 24 points, but made only six of 15 field-goal attempts and couldn’t get the ball in the basket when Cincinnati needed it most.

“We weren’t going to let them bully us over,” Jones said.

The fifth-seeded Bulldogs became the lowest-seeded team to reach the Final Four since No. 6-seeded Michigan won the Southeast, then lost to Duke in the 1991 title game. Sunday, it all began with the 6-foot-7 Jones, a junior-college transfer whose last such hot spell came in the SEC title game against Kentucky, in which he scored 28.

Jones scored the first five points of the game, and tossed in an assortment of fallaway jumpers and deep three-point shots (and had 10 points) before his first miss, five minutes into the game.

At the 11:52 mark, the Bulldogs had a 20-10 lead over Cincinnati, and Jones had 15 of those points, on six-for-seven shooting.

“When he’s shooting the ball like that,” said Bullard, whose steady play kept the Bulldogs cruising throughout the regional, “all we do is get him the ball as quickly as possible. When he’s feeling like that, I don’t think there’s any player who can stop him.

“He was making fallaways, pull-ups, he was doing it all. You can’t put a small man on him, because Dontae’ will jump over him. You can’t put a big guy on him, because he’ll drop it on the floor and go by.”

After Jones’ flourish was over, Cincinnati slowly trudged back in the game, though Fortson was finding it almost impossible to get a clean shot off against Bulldog center Erick Dampier.

At halftime, the Bulldog lead was 37-29, and a quick, 9-4 Bearcat run to start off the second half narrowed the lead to three, with 15:19 to play. Then, Dampier, the key to Mississippi State’s aggressive man-to-man defense, picked up his fourth foul with 11:26 left and the score 48-41.

But with freshman Tyrone Washington filling in for Dampier, Cincinnati (28-5), the champions of Conference USA, could manage only three points in the next 7:55 against Mississippi State’s aggressive man-to-man.