Vanderbilt, Mississippi State scheme to perfect marks

If they are hoaxes, as the Top 25 polls want us to believe, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State are elaborate hoaxes. Together they have played 24 games, and they have won 24 games.

Junior forward Lawrence Roberts is averaging 15.8 points and 10.8 rebounds per game. (AP)

Forget that neither team has played a grueling schedule or was on the national radar in October, just admit that 24 up, 24 down is something to celebrate -- especially this season, when Belmont has beaten Missouri, UC Santa Barbara has beaten UCLA, Central Michigan has beaten Notre Dame and Hofstra has beaten St. John's.

Nobody has beaten No. 20 Vanderbilt, and nobody has beaten No. 22 Mississippi State, and if they are hoaxes, let them enjoy these final moments of perfection. The first SEC Saturday of the season is here. They will be unmasked soon enough.

Unless they're not hoaxes.

Make a checklist of the elements common to college basketball greatness, and it'll look something like this: star power, veteran leadership, solid guard play. If you have those three things, brother, you've got a salty basketball team.

Vanderbilt and Mississippi State do:

• Both have candidates for SEC player of the year: Matt Freije of Vanderbilt and Lawrence Roberts of Mississippi State. Both are 6-foot-9, 230-pound forwards, but they get it done in different ways. Freije is one of the best-shooting big men in the country, averaging 18.8 points and shooting 41.3 percent on 3-pointers and 86.1 percent from the line. Roberts is more of a low-block guy, averaging 15.8 points and 10.8 rebounds. "Lawrence Roberts is a great player and is having a major impact on this league," says Arkansas coach Stan Heath, whose team faces the Bulldogs on Saturday in Starkville, Miss. "He has taken that team to another level. Roberts is a much more skilled player than (former Bulldogs All-SEC center) Mario Austin was."

• The Commodores' perfect season almost came undone Wednesday against Auburn. Vanderbilt let a 17-point lead slip away, trailing 53-48 in the final 5½ minutes. Commodores coach Kevin Stallings called timeout and ... wait a minute, no he didn't. He didn't call timeout. He had veterans on the floor like Freije, senior guard Russell Lakey and junior guard Jason Holwerda. He let them play. "I don't know what I would have said to them," Stallings says. "'Make more shots?' Or, 'Play better?' We were taking good shots ... I just didn't think I needed to call a timeout to tell them something they've heard 34 times." Vandy scored the game's final 11 points to win 59-53. Mississippi State is even older, its top six players juniors or seniors -- very little is going to happen on the court that they haven't seen before.

• Both teams often play with multiple point guards. Vanderbilt platoons the trio of Lakey, Holwerda and sophomore Mario Moore, while Mississippi State pairs twin points Timmy Bowers and Gary Ervin. Vanderbilt gets consistency from its guards, none of whom score in double figures but all produce significantly more assists than turnovers. Mississippi State gets scoring from Bowers (16.6 points) and nearly three steals per game from the Bowers-Ervin tandem, though they could stand to improve their roughly 1.5-to-1 assist-turnover ratio.

Hoaxes they may prove to be, but neither Heath nor Kentucky coach Tubby Smith seems inclined to believe that. Smith will get his first up-close look at Vanderbilt on Saturday when the Commodores visit No. 7 Kentucky.

"The sky is the limit for them right now because they believe in the system and what they are doing," Smith says. "They just have great team chemistry."

As for Heath, he speaks of Mississippi State but might as well be referring to both of the SEC's final undefeated teams.

"We've got our hands full this weekend," Heath says. "No one in the entire country has figured out how to beat them yet."