I’m still here in Bowling Green, Ky., pondering what transpired last night in Mississippi State’s 55-52 loss to Western Kentucky. Coach Rick Stansbury tried to dismiss the notion that his team has any major issues to deal with as SEC play approaches – MSU opens at No. 14 Ole Miss on Saturday – and wanted to give a lot of credit to WKU. Fair enough.

But the final result is still a head scratcher. WKU coach Ken McDonald said after the game exactly what he said before the game – that he thinks MSU will vie for the SEC title. That’s what most of us have thought, but that now seems like a shaky proposition.

As I listened to the Hilltoppers’ postgame show on the way back to my hotel, one of the co-hosts said that something he always looks closely at are those five statistical categories you find in the small print at the bottom of the stat sheet. WKU won most of those categories.

• Points in the paint: MSU 20, WKU 20. That’s an area where the Toppers have struggled, and MSU should have won that battle. So that’s a win for Western.

• Points off turnovers: WKU 18, MSU 8. The Bulldogs committed 18 turnovers and were downright careless at times. But WKU also did a good job filling the passing and driving lanes.

• Second chance points: MSU 8, WKU 4. State won the rebounding battle, 41-34, which helped this stat.

• Fast break points: WKU 9, MSU 5. Transition basketball is what Stansbury prefers, but there wasn’t much of it Monday night.

• Bench points: WKU 22, MSU 2. That’s unacceptable. The bench is normally a strong point for MSU.

So I ask, how much concern should there be for MSU? Western Kentucky is a very good team; it’s won three NCAA tournament games over the past two seasons. And this was a road game at a place that rarely sees the home team lose. But it seems like every time MSU faces a tough mid-major – see: Rider, Richmond – it struggles.

And those struggles raise the question of whether MSU really can compete for the SEC crown. I guess we’ll start seeing the answer to that very soon.