remaining in the regular season.

An 87-67 setback to Mississippi State left Matt McMahon’s team two games behind the Bulldogs, who would also win a two-team tiebreaker with the Tigers. So with its chances of a top-seven finish unlikely, LSU will focus on finishing the season strong.

LSU finds itself in a three-way tie with Ole Miss and Texas A&M for eighth place in the league — all with 6-8 marks. The Tigers, however, have the edge at this point by virtue of a better winning percentage in games among the three teams.

That will all sort itself out in the next two weeks. So the only thing LSU can do is move on from Mississippi State, starting with a 6 p.m. Tuesday matchup with Georgia in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. The SEC Network will televise the game.

This is the second meeting between LSU (14-13, 6-8 SEC) and Georgia (15-12, 5-9) this season. The Bulldogs edged the Tigers 68-66 on Jan. 24 in Athens when Jordan Wright’s corner 3-point shot rimmed in and out at the final horn.

That loss, plus the fact that LSU is just one game ahead of Georgia, makes this one more important for both teams as they try to make a late rush before the SEC tournament.

For a short-handed LSU squad, that means pushing through its third game in a seven-day span after Mississippi State wore down the Tigers in the second half with relentless physicality on both ends of the floor.

“Guys love to play … we’re coming down to the wire,” McMahon said Monday. “The reality is we’re guaranteed 200 minutes (five games) this year. That’s it.

“Everyone’s tired in February, everyone’s a little beat up. We just have to figure out ways to overcome a little bit of the fatigue that you saw set in Saturday.”

The task of getting his team back on the court just 72 hours later became tougher when Tyrell Ward injured his hip in the first half against the Bulldogs and did not return. McMahon said Ward and Jalen Cook, who’s missed the past three games with knee soreness, are day-to-day.

“Obviously, that hurt us,” McMahon said of losing Ward, the team’s best 3-point shooter at 43.8% for the season and 52.2% in SEC play. “He’s been our best player the last five games, really scoring the ball at a high level.”

Ward has averaged 13.4 points with 11 3-pointers in that five-game stretch, while Cook leads the team with 15.6 points a game.