In basketball, Mississippi State has won SEC Championships in 1959, 1961, Mississippi State Bulldogs Tickets 1962, 1963, 1991, and 2004, and SEC Tournament Championships in 1996 and 2002. The Bulldogs have played in the NCAA Basketball Tournament in 1963, 1991, 1995, 1996, Mississippi State Bulldogs Tickets 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2008 and in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in 1974, 1990, 1999, 2001, and 2007. In 1996, MSU made it to the NCAA Mississippi State Bulldogs Tickets Final Four before losing in the national semi-finals to the Syracuse Orangemen. In 1963, the team made history by defying an order from the Governor of Mississippi not to play in the Mississippi State Bulldogs Tickets NCAA tournament, because the team they faced, Loyola University of Chicago, had African-Americans on its squad (4 of them were starters). Coach Babe McCarthy sneaked the team out Mississippi State Bulldogs Tickets of Starkville to travel to East Lansing, Michigan, to face Loyola, only to lose to the Ramblers, who went on to win the title that year. This was one of the first times that an all-white school faced Mississippi State Bulldogs Tickets a team with black members, and it is considered to be a watershed moment in the Civil Rights era. Boston Celtics great Bailey Howell played at Mississippi State and is the only MSU Mississippi State Bulldogs Tickets player to be in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
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