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ORLANDO - For a while, Mississippi State seemed like it might be on the wrong end of some dubious NCAA Tournament history.
The No. 2-seeded Bulldogs, the SEC regular-season champs, led No. 15-seeded Northeast Conference flag-bearer Monmouth 36-32 with 5:06 left in the opening half. Only four times since the NCAA field expanded in 1985 has a No. 2 gone one and out.
Not to worry.
The Bulldogs (26-3) went on a 10-2 run to close the half and then poured it on after halftime. They began the second half outscoring the overmatched Hawks 24-3 and cruised to an 85-52 win.
"Our quickness and athleticism kind of separated us a little bit; that's what it's supposed to do," Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury said. "It always doesn't happen that way, but that's one thing we were hoping we'd be able to do is use our quickness and to do that, you have to get stops."
To recap: Monmouth (21-12) hit just two field goals in a 16:21 span from the end of the first half.
"We kind of got out of our game plan and when you're playing a team that's that talented, you have a five-minute mental lapse and there it is; boom," said sophomore guard Tyler Azzarelli, the former Plant star. "We let them settle into a rhythm (at the end of the half) and we kind of got out of rhythm and it carried over."
But there is cause to worry for the Bulldogs' second-round matchup Sunday in the Atlanta Region.
Junior forward Lawrence Roberts, the SEC player of the year who was playing on the right ankle he sprained last week, took a thumb in the eye from Monmouth senior forward Russ Anderson while going for a rebound with 10:48 left.
"I got the rebound and he swiped at it; the ball hurt me more than the scratch itself, so I was a little scared about that," said Lawrence, who finished with a game-high 19 points.
He said he has some bleariness, but the eye wasn't swollen shut and he said he expects to be fine.
VANDY 71, W. MICHIGAN 58: Sophomore guard Mario Moore had been making a third of his 3-pointers during the regular season but hit a few more than that on the biggest of stages.
Moore was 6-of-8 from beyond the arc, including a critical one with 4:34 left that sparked a decisive 16-5 run, and finished with a career-high 26 points.
"We just ran the offense and luckily I was able to get the ball in places to score," he said.
But for the sixth-seeded Commodores (22-9), labeled by many as the underdogs to the MAC champion Broncos (26-5) despite the seeding, the win that moved them to the second round for the first time since 1993 began with a defensive change.
Senior forward Mike Williams had scored 16 to give 11th-seeded Western Michigan a 34-31 halftime lead, but Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings moved his senior forward star, Matt Freije, on him in the second half.
"Coach kind of got on me in the huddle, that I can't guard anybody and then he said, "Well, now you're guarding Williams and he's their best player," Freije said.
"Tremendous motivation, isn't it," Stallings said.
Freije used his size (6-10 and 249 pounds) to keep the smaller Williams (6-8, 190) away from the ball as much as possible and used his court savvy to contest the shots he could get. Williams hit 3 of 10 shots in the second half to finish with 24 points.
N.C. STATE 61, LA.-LAFAYETTE 52: When the offense was failing, or at least missing more often than not, the Wolfpack turned to its tenacious defense and near flawless free-throw shooting to advance to Sunday's second round.
The third-seeded Wolfpack (21-9), playing for a fifth straight game without injured senior guard Scooter Sherrill, held the 14th-seeded Ragin' Cajuns to 26 points below their average on 32.7 percent shooting. That included 5 of 22 from 3-point range, matching their season low.
"That's a hell of a testament to our guys' fortitude on defense," said N.C. State coach Herb Sendek, adding his team didn't deserve any overall style points.