MSU Bulldog Football On CBS?

Somehow CBS has accidentally leaked their SEC football broadcast schedule for this upcoming season….not sure why it must be a “leak” or an “accident” – CBS typically doesn’t announce the games they will televise until around 10 days before the match-up.

Nonetheless, Saturdays in the South seems to have stumbled onto something, and Deadspin is trying to confirm.

The Mississippi State Bulldogs only appear once on this supposedly tentative schedule….it’s the November 22nd date with Arkansas in Starkville. The caveat is that Ole Miss @ LSU and Tennessee @ Vanderbilt also appear as televised possibilities on the same date.

Right now, the Bulldogs only have three televised games on the schedule: the August 30 opener at Louisiana Tech (ESPN2) , the September 13 matchup versus Auburn in Starkville (ESPN2), and the November 28 finale against Ole Miss in Oxford (Raycom).

Let’s hope that Miss. State remains relevant up until that second to last game versus Arkansas. It’d be nice for Coach Croom and his Bulldogs to be broadcast into the living rooms of fans and potential recruits alike.

Why The Mavericks May Be Charles Rhodes’ Best Shot

Rhodes will try his ten-gallon hat in Big D

It’s been reported in the Dallas Morning News that Charles Rhodes will join the Dallas Mavericks summer league team in Las Vegas. Bulldog Killer….Vanderbilt’s Shan Foster, taken 51st overall in the draft, will be among others vying for a spot.

Why a potential good fit for Rhodes.

Assuming that Eddie Jones does not opt-out of the final year of his contract, he must do so by Tuesday, the Mavs are left with only seven players signed for next season. Just two of those players are big men in former Bulldog, Erick Dampier, and Hasselhoff fan, Dirk Nowitzki. It looks like the Mavericks will attempt to use their full MLE (mid-level exception) on DeSagana Diop (whom Dallas traded to New Jersey to get Jason Kidd). Diop would serve as a two headed monster along with Big Damp at the five spot.

The Mavs will still need a post player with scoring ability as Diop and Dampier are often estranged from the hoop. Rhodes has the capability to provide buckets in a variety of ways, given he doesn’t force the issue and learns to distribute as a team player. Rhodes’ biggest competition among other post players in Vegas will be Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Pape Sow, and Marcus Slaughter.

New Dallas coach, Rick Carlisle, is known to be demanding of players. But his appreciation of offense and defense should allow Rhodes to show his diverse skills, as long as he works his butt off.

Ideal Big Man Camp?

The Clarion-Ledger had a feature on Jarvis Varnado in Sunday’s edition. Varnado recently participated in one of Nike’s invitation only Skills Academies. Steve Nash has a point guard camp, Kobe Bryant has a shooting guard camp, Vince Carter has a wing forward camp, and Amare Stoudamire has a big man camp.

These Nike camps serve as a pseudo grassroots campaign initiated to instill fundamentals back in USA basketball. Varnado was one of around a dozen or so players at his position invited to participate in Stoudamire’s exclusive camp. The college participants in turn acted as instructors to top high school prospects, also invited to improve skills for their respective position.

MSU coach Rick Stansbury should be ecstatic about Varnado’s participation. He had an excellent chance to go against elite college bigs such as UConn senior Jeff Adrien, Pitt sophomore DeJuan Blair, Notre Dame junior Luke Harangody, and Oklahoma sophomore Blake Griffin. Amare Stoudamire is a great talent. But between you and me, I’d rather hear that the camp be led by the likes of Bill Russell, David Robinson, Kevin Garnett, or Tim Duncan….much better examples to headline where the American big man game should be going.

Free Throw Conditioning

Every time clips of last second March Madness heroics are shown, should missed free-throws be responsible for setting the scene, they should be prerequisite viewing along with the buzzer beater. The importance of FT shooting needs to be further indoctrinated somehow.

Case in point: I was flipping around the tube on Saturday afternoon and came across the last two minutes of the 1998 tourney match-up between Ole Miss and Valparaiso…you know, the Bryce Drew game. With 4.1 seconds left and Ole Miss up 69-67, Ansu Sesay had a chance to ice the match at the charity stripe. Clang. Timeout. Clang. Rebound tipped out of bounds by Ole Miss with 2.5 seconds left and the distance of the court to go. The rest is history.

The latest and greatest example for the Mississippi State Bulldogs? Try the three-point buzzer beater West Virginia hit to win the March 2007 NIT semifinal game in Madison Square Garden. Live Angle. Game Highlights. And then the video showing Jamont Gordon missing the second of two FTs which would have put the Bulldogs up three, 63-60.

Is Mississippi State Basketball a “No-Win” Situation?

Mississippi State head basketball coach Rick Stansbury has certainly had his share of detractors. I’ve been critical of the guy at times myself. But I maintain that Stansbury is the right man for the job. In my opinion, no other coach could get the big time recruits into Starkville as Stansbury has proven capable of doing time and time again.

Recently, Coach Stansbury has come under fire as a result of the transfer of ‘great white hype’ Ben Hansbrough to Notre Dame. Message board aficionados cited a recent trend of non-NBA related premature departures from the MSU basketball program. A more in depth article on Bulldog basketball transfers will be forthcoming, but essentially, these occurrences are no biggie. Just look at what’s going on at heralded and beloved programs such as Georgetown.

Sports Illustrated recently polled college basketball coaches on their opinion of the most difficult jobs in each of the six BCS conferences. Evidently, the ACC was deemed to be exempt as every head coaching job is seemingly an ideal situation. Either that’s a complete crock, or a drastic statement on the inability of some ACC coaches to win at certain programs…..but that’s neither here nor there. I will respite from analyzing ACC basketball history.

As you can predict, Mississippi State came up as the most difficult place to win in the SEC. Here is the excerpt from No-Win Situations? by George Dohrmann of SI.com:

MISSISSIPPI STATE: Coaching in the SEC requires “a moral flexibility,” as one coach terms it. “Most of the schools are willing to bend the rules to help get the recruits you need to win.” Another coach says, “It’s not easy to get a recruit to go to Starkville,” but the Bulldogs’ Rick Stansbury has “proven it can be done.”

The following schools from the other four BCS conferences were mentioned: Oregon State (Pac-10), Penn State (Big 10/11), Nebraska (Big 12), and Seton Hall (Big East).

Now, I’m not necessarily offended…..wait, I am offended. Coaches are saying that Mississippi State is more difficult than Ole Miss? C’mon folks, the Rebels play at the decrepit “Tad Pad” and have 22 less wins that the Bulldogs in the past ten years…..that’s pretty much an entire season.

In comparison to the rest of the league, Ole Miss and Mississippi State are perpetually the bottom two in terms of athletic department budget. According to 2007 numbers, the Bulldogs are an SEC worst at $28 million while the Rebels come in at $33 million. The University of Florida has the highest budget at $76 million and is followed by seven schools, (Auburn, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, LSU, and South Carolina), all whose budgets more than double that of Mississippi State. So yes, athletic budget would be the most glaring factor in determining the difficulty of success.

What does this all mean? It means that Rick Stansbury is doing a helluva job. During his ten seasons as head coach of the Mississippi State basketball program, Rick Stansbury has only amassed 208 wins (the most in school history), a .647 winning percentage, 5 NCAA Tournament appearances (3 NIT), 4 SEC West titles, 1 regular season SEC championship, and 1 SEC Tournament title. During this time, only two SEC programs have more wins that Mississippi State, Florida and Kentucky.

As of April 10 of 2008, Rivals.com listed Rick Stansbury at #23 of its college basketball head coach power rankings, behind other SEC coaches Bruce Pearl (#7 – Tennessee), Trent Johnson (#15 and new at LSU), Billy Donovan (#16 – Florida), and Kevin Stalling (#20 – Vanderbilt).

Stansbury is also willing to recruit 8th graders…or “cats” (hasn’t happened to date), and probably has more flexibility than a yoga instructor in Sports Illustrated’s aforementioned prerequisite for SEC coaches.

You know what I say…..keep on keepin’ on. Now if Stansbury can only find a way to get to the Sweet Sixteen.

Big Game For The Bulldogs, Those Florida Gators

Well, I’ve been out of the country for the past couple of weeks and in the process, missed 3 and 1/2 Mississippi State Bulldog games. I say 3.5 because I was able to catch the first half of the Arkansas game in the airport before I left. I’d say that a 3-1 record is not bad in my absence.

W VS. ARKANSAS
First Half observations: Ravern Johnson is going to be a helluva ball player….evident by the nice dunk he had at the 12:30 mark. Charles Rhodes is an agile big man, with very nice footwork, who has skills which just might translate to the next level, but he will need a good NCAA tournament a la Antonio McDyess for Alabama years ago to really get noticed by NBA scouts. Patrick Beverley made Ben Hansbrough look pretty silly on defense….then again, Beverley is good and Hansbrough is white. The Bulldogs built a 13 point halftime lead despite the usual Jekyll and Hyde act from Jamont Gordon. As for the second half, I caught an update from my father over the phone on my layover in Atlanta….and from the first 60 or so seconds of our conversation, I was under the impression that the Dawgs blew it and lost — only later to get that “a win is a win” relief in finding out that MSU prevailed over Arkansas 80-74 thanks to the strong effort by Charles Rhodes and no thanks to a horrible effort by Jamont Gordon. [game photos from the Clarion-Ledger]

L @ OLE MISS
I initially predicted that the Bulldogs would beat an overrated Rebel squad up in Oxford. They didn’t. Oh well, you can always throw records and theories out in rivalry games such as this. From what I read overseas, it looked like the Dawgs got off to a hot start and were well on their way to routing Ole Miss as they did in Starkville. From the light-hearted nature of the team leaders after the game, maybe they expected to lose. In the end, not being able to stop a freshman point guard (Chris Warren has 22 for OM — not sure who was guarding him) and allowing Dwayne Curtis to dominate the boards with 16 (8 offense) will easily lead to a 74-63 loss to Ole Miss for the MSU Bulldogs, despite Jamont Gordon “limiting” himself to only 4 turnovers.

W (in OT) @ SOUTH CAROLINA
I didn’t read anything about this game except for an email from one of my contacts which pretty much sums it up: “I don’t care that we beat USC in OT. Very lucky. Coaching is terrible. Gordon runs wild. Points off turnovers – 26-5 Carolina.” I’ll just go with that “A Win Is A Win” thing again, especially on the road in the SEC. And at least young Ben Hansbrough came through big time in the clutch. Of course, if you go read the Clarion-Ledger or the official MSU site, they will paint the game as pretty picture and a great win. But the fact is that South Carolina is terrible. Right now, they are 12-15 overall and 4-9 in the SEC….a Bulldog team that wants to make noise in the NCAA tournament would have cleaned their clock.

W VS. AUBURN
Auburn is bad too. The Dawgs made them look like a D2 team on the Plains with an 83-64 win back on February 9th. I had a pretty intensive break-down of that Mississippi State-Auburn game on this blog. There was no reason to think that the Dawgs wouldn’t win this one at home on February 27th….they did, 89-78, clinching at least a tie of the SEC West crown. And look! — the team only had 12 total turnovers….Jamont came through with 6 of those 12.

Today’s Game @ The Florida Gators
Here’s where the Mississippi State Bulldogs stand: with a 19-8 overall record and a 10-3 SEC record (and a 41 RPI), the Bulldogs are pretty much a cinch for the NCAA tournament. I think I heard on ESPN this morning that only two SEC teams with 10 conference wins have ever been left out the big tourney (they were talking about Kentucky), but that’s when they played 18 conference games instead of 16. ESPN Bracketology currently has the Dawgs as an 8 seed playing UNLV in Little Rock. Forget playing for the SEC West title, forget playing for higher seeding in the NCAA, forget playing for a chance at the overall, and outright, SEC title……the Bulldogs need to win this one to gain momentum and confidence as a team heading into the SEC conference tournament and the Big Dance. I’ll be heading over to the Crystal City Sports Pub in Alexandria, VA to watch the game and will get an analysis of the game in a subsequent post.

GO DAWGS!