Some billed Tuesday night's Kentucky-Mississippi State game and the battle between big men Nick Richards and Reggie Perry as a battle of SEC Player of the Year candidates. But Samir Doughty and Mason Jones made the night's Auburn vs. Arkansas undercard hard to top in a battle of dark-horse candidates for the award.

Doughty's Auburn team held off Arkansas 79-76 on the road, but only after Jones' final 3-point attempt hit two sides of the rim and bounced off as the overtime clock expired. Jones finished with 40 points, bringing his average over Arkansas' last six games to 27.2 points and securing the adulation of Auburn coach Bruce Pearl.

"How good is Mason Jones?" Pearl said. "Wow. What a story. He is just a great lesson for young people. It's not where you start. It's where you finish. Bettering yourself. He's as good as there is in the league."

Jones was not voted to the preseason first or second All-SEC teams, yet he owns both of the league's 40-point games this season. He is garnering little buzz in NBA mock drafts, but on Tuesday he joined Jodie Meeks and Shaquille O'Neal — both of whom had long NBA careers — as the only SEC players in the last 30 seasons with multiple career 40-point games.

And his emergence could not have come at a better time for Arkansas, which learned before Tuesday's loss that it will be without its No. 2 scorer Isaiah Joe indefinitely after Joe underwent knee surgery. According to Jerry Palm's latest Bracketology, Arkansas is on the bubble to make the NCAA Tournament and, prior to facing Auburn, the Razorbacks were a No. 8 seed. According to Palm, the loss will not hurt Arkansas, but if it is to make the 68-team field, they will need Jones to continue shouldering an immense load.

Maybe if he does, the conversation surrounding who deserves to be SEC Player of the Year will expand to include Jones, who Arkansas coach Eric Musselman recently likened to a baseball utility player. The Razorbacks' new up-tempo, small-ball style left the 6-foot-5 Jones with little choice but to expand his game as Arkansas transitioned from Mike Anderson to Musselman.

"He's setting screens for us in pick and rolls, then he ends up handling for us in pick-and-rolls, then we put him in isolation situations, then we bring him off double screens on the weak side," Musselman told reporters. "He's got great court vision. He truly is, when you think about point forwards…That's kind of how he is for us, is that point forward who does a whole bunch of different things for us."

Jones, who is in his second season with the program, is following a well-established precedent at Arkansas as a junior college player finding success in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The season before he arrived from Connors State College in Oklahoma, a pair of junior college transfers led the Razorbacks to a second consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance.

Those players, Jaylen Barford and Daryl Macon, made the preseason All-SEC first team in 2017 after they averaged 12.8 and 13.4 points, respectively as juniors at Arkansas.

In his junior year last season, Jones averaged 13.6 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.8 assists and shot 36.5% on 3-pointers. But he did not receive any postseason accolades from the conference, and he was not voted to the preseason first or second All-SEC teams before this season.

But as Musselman prepared for his first season at Arkansas, he could see something in Jones that the league's other coaches voting on such things could not.

"It really started this summer," Musselman told reporters. "I think about him at six in the morning getting shots up. The whole team didn't get up and shoot at six in the morning. He was a guy that was very consistent in his approach, and I think that all of his hard work is why he's had a jump from maybe where he was last year. The versatility that he's added to his game. Not just a spot up shooter, but his ability to create off the dribble, his ability to be a point forward now. He plays point guard as the game kind of goes on."

That was certainly the case Tuesday as the ball ended up in Jones' hands on most possessions while the Razorbacks tried to add a third Quadrant 1 victory to their resume.  

Ultimately, they came up just a bit short, largely due to Daughty and his team-high 23 points.

But it's hard to argue that Jones was not the best player on the floor, not just in Fayetteville, but anywhere in the SEC on Tuesday night.

"It's awesome when a guy works hard and then his game elevates," Musselman said, "which is what has happened with Mason."