Drake men's basketball team hands No. 15 Mississippi State its first loss
LINCOLN, Neb. – Roman Penn scored 19 points, Sardaar Calhoun made four 3-pointers in the second half, and the Drake men's basketball team upset No. 15 Mississippi State 58-52 on Tuesday.
Calhoun finished with 17 points and Tucker DeVries added 15 for Drake (9-3), which beat a ranked opponent for the first time since 2013.
“This was a big one for us,” Drake coach Darian DeVries said. “We didn’t get rewarded with a win in Saint Louis (on Dec. 17) but I thought we’ve made some strides over the last week. Our guys stuck together with the formula we thought would be successful.”
Eric Reed Jr. scored all of his team-high 11 points in the first half for Mississippi State (11-1).
Tucker DeVries’ floater in the lane put Drake up 52-50 with 1:51 left, and Penn hit a jumper for a four-point lead with just over a minute left.
Dashawn Davis’ basket cut it back to two, and MSU had a chance to tie or take the lead after Penn missed from in close. But Drake got the ball back with 14.4 seconds left when D.J. Jeffries slipped to the floor as Cameron Matthews sent a pass his way and the ball flew out of bounds untouched.
Penn made four free throws in the last 10 seconds to secure Drake’s first win over a Power Five opponent since it beat Kansas State in the 2020-21 season opener.
“I was really proud of the guys because we were able to beat them at their own game,” Darian DeVries said. “Matching their physicality says a lot about the type of game we played. Our guys did a great job coming out and controlling the glass on the defensive end while limiting our turnovers.”
The neutral-site game was part of the Battle in the Vault event at Pinnacle Bank Arena.
MSU entered the day having played the 300th toughest schedule out of 363 teams, according to the NCAA, and its eight wins over quad four opponents in the NET rankings were tied for second most in the nation. MSU had to come from behind in the second halves of its previous two games, against Jackson State and Nicholls. MSU couldn’t complete a comeback this time against the Missouri Valley Conference preseason favorite.
Drake shot just 36% and committed 13 turnovers, but the work of Calhoun and Penn in the second half highlighted what otherwise was a grinding game.
MSU shot just 38% and turned over the ball 17 times and never found much offensive flow. MSU missed 11 of its first 14 shots and was down 15-6 before it ripped off 12 straight points to take its first lead. Late in the half, Reed made three straight 3-pointers to begin a 13-5 spurt that put MSU up 31-23 at half.
Drake had come into the game after two straight losses and left with its first win over a Southeastern Conference opponent since it beat Georgia on Dec. 22, 1973. The Bulldogs snapped a seven-game losing streak to SEC opponents.
Drake hosts NAIA St. Ambrose on Wednesday in a game moved up one day because of a winter storm forecast for central Iowa.
The Associated Press and the Drake sports information department contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Drake men's basketball team hands No. 15 Mississippi State its first loss
