NCAA Basketball: Ranking the final 10 unbeaten teams for 2022-23 season
By Joey Loose
6. Mississippi State
There’s another SEC team off to a perfect start during a new era and it’s Mississippi State under new head coach Chris Jans. He had great success at New Mexico State and has these Bulldogs playing good basketball, with the program off to an 8-0 start.
Their schedule hasn’t been the strongest, but they’ve been significantly more challenged than the teams below them on the list. They picked up neutral-site wins over Marquette and Utah in late November, and these are wins that could look much better or much worse as the season progresses. The defense of the Bulldogs has been winning them games to this point, allowing no more than 55 points in any of their first eight outings.
A plethora of transfers are playing significant roles for the Bulldogs, but it’s returning star Tolu Smith (16.3 ppg, 10.0 rpg) who’s leading the charge. Smith is averaging a double-double and is the only double-digit scorer for these Bulldogs. D. J. Jeffries and Cameron Matthews, former high school teammates, continue to play major roles while transfers like Dashawn Davis and Eric Reed are contributing, with much of their depth new faces in the program.
The Bulldogs play their first true road game of the season at Minnesota this upcoming Sunday, but a win there might guarantee they’ll be undefeated for several more weeks. SEC play will be a slap of reality, especially with Alabama and Tennessee as their first two opponents around New Year’s. We’ll see how real the progress is for these Bulldogs, but this is definitely a talented squad that has the ability to pull off some conference wins and slide into the NCAA Tournament three months from now.