Mississippi State is defeated by Kentucky basketball thanks to a buzzer-beater by Reed Sheppard.

On Tuesday night, it was better late than never for the Kentucky Wildcats.
In the last seconds of the game on Tuesday night at Humphrey Coliseum, Reed Sheppard nailed a runner in the lane to give Kentucky a 91-89 win against Mississippi State. For the bulk of the match, the Cats were behind.

With 4:24 remaining, Rob Dillingham made a 3-pointer to give UK its first lead of the game, 72–71. After the first points were scored, the Bulldogs had led the whole game except for a brief 28-second tie that occurred early in the first half. In the second half, Sheppard and Antonio Reeves scored heavily.
Reeves ended with 21 points, while Sheppard finished with 32 points, five rebounds, and seven assists. With fewer than two minutes remaining in the game, the Wildcats led 76-75 thanks to Sheppard’s 23 points in the second half. However, Sheppard scored five baskets in a row to give the Cats a bigger lead in the closing minutes of the game.
Before his shot to win it, in the last seventy seconds of the game, Sheppard made six of his six free throw attempts. Sheppard’s shot went in, and the buzzer went off, but the authorities added 0.5 seconds to the clock. When Sheppard caught Mississippi State’s inbounds pass, the game was over.
Sheppard hit all seven of his two-point tries and went 11 for 14 from the field in addition to his six free throws. Josh Hubbard, a rookie guard for Mississippi State, scored 34 points, including a three-pointer with ten seconds left to tie the game.
During his 15 seasons as Kentucky’s head coach, John Calipari increased his record against Mississippi State to 19-1. He is now 9-0 at The Hump. His lone loss against the Bulldogs occurred in the 2021 SEC Tournament, the last game of UK’s miserable 2020–21 campaign, which concluded with a 9–16 record.
Since the program’s first season under Billy Gillispie on January 15, 2008, the Cats have not suffered a loss in Starkville. With a 10-5 record in the SEC, UK is now 20-8. With only a 3-pointer from Wagner accounting for the Cats’ sole point in the first few minutes, Kentucky trailed the Bulldogs 11-0 until Zvonimir Ivisic broke in the lane for a slam with 14:13 remaining in the half.
The Wildcats went on a 7-0 run after the jam, cutting Mississippi State’s advantage to two points in the second half but failing to take the lead before intermission. Before missing a chance at the buzzer to end the half, the Bulldogs (19-9, 8-7 SEC) hit nine out of ten of their attempts.
In the last 2:50 before halftime, the burst of activity featured three consecutive 3-pointers, two of which were made by former UK pledge D.J. Jeffries with seconds remaining on the shot clock. Following the last 3-pointer of that run, Mississippi State had a double-digit lead again, 43-32, but Wagner’s long-range basket trimmed the Bulldogs’ lead to eight points at the half.
Tre Mitchell, Kentucky’s starting forward, missed the game for the fourth straight due to a shoulder ailment. In order to give Mitchell time to get back into game condition, Calipari said on Tuesday night that he would not play the fifth-year player as much as he did earlier in the season when he does return to the field. Mitchell has now missed six of UK’s previous seven games due to injury.

KUTTUKY’S UPCOMING GAME

The Wildcats’ last two home games of the season will be played in Lexington, beginning on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. on CBS against the Arkansas Razorbacks. This season, the Hogs have disappointed. They began the 2023–24 campaign at No. 14 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, but they swiftly fell out of the rankings.
They went into their late-night game against Vanderbilt on Tuesday night with a 14–13 record and a 5–9 SEC record. Arkansas had just defeated Texas A&M and Missouri the night before. After Arkansas’ 63-57 loss to Kentucky in Fayetteville on January 27, the Razorbacks entered Tuesday at No. 118 in the KenPom rankings, 12th in the SEC behind only Missouri and Vanderbilt.

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