New Basketball Rankings

Scout updated their 2008 basketball recruit rankings today and I believe Rivals did as well some time ago. Some of our guys have been moving up:

-Scotty Hopson: Hopson has exploded over the summer and the rankings reflect that with both sites now rating him as a 5 star. Rivals has reclassified him as a SG and rated him as the #2 SG in the class. Also they moved him up to the #9 player overall. Scout now ranks him as the #3 SF and the 11th rated player overall. Rumors continue to swirl about how firm he is in his commitment, but at this point the only real threat would be Kentucky. Kentucky fans are confident he will end up with them in the end but that is mainly because they are too arrogant to believe it is possible for a recruit to prefer lowly little Mississippi State to the wonder and splendor which is UK basketball. When asked Hopson has maintained that he is just as firm as ever in his commitment.

-Romero Osby: Osby is pretty much in a holding pattern at the moment. Rivals has him as a 4 star, the #17 ranked PF and the #52 player overall. Scout also gives him 4 stars, ranking him as the #13 PF and #50 overall.

-Dee Bost: According to Rivals, the #28 point guard #130 overall. Scout has come out with a 2008 post graduate rankings, which I had never heard of before. Here he is the #6 ranked post graduate player.

Basketball Picks Up Third Commit for '08

Dee Bost became the third Bulldog commitment for the '08 class on Wednesday. He was a senior in high school this past year but will be attending prep school, Hargrave to be specific, for a year to get his grades up to par. Thus the reclassification to an '08 recruit. Scout ranked him as a 4 star in '07 and had him as the 95th player overall and the 20th ranked shooting guard. He is still a 4 star in '08, but Scout doesn't rank reclassified players so I have to go by the '07 rankings. According to Rivals, Bost is a high 3 star, the #115 player in the country and the #21 ranked point guard. He averaged 17.8 points, five rebounds, and 4 assists his senior year.

Bost will almost certainly be a point guard at State and the replacement for Jamont Gordon. He might play SG for a while until he gets his feet wet. From what I can tell he is a distributor first and scorer second, which is fine as there will be plenty of other scoring options. Here's a little snippet:

Bost showed his toughness at the King James event in Akron. Will fire into the lane as though he is built like a prize fighter, as opposed to the smaller Satterfield-like frame he carries. Sees the floor well and loves to run the break. Is a very good shooter from deep, but loves the 'track team' style of play. - Mike Ryan

He played point guard in high school as well as playing quarterback and cornerback in football. He was the MVP of both the football and basketball state championship games, which if I'm not mistaken is the first time that has happened in North Carolina. Given that, its not suprising he was named the North Carolina male athlete of the year. Basically, he is just a leader and a winner. The Clarion Ledger has a little bit more on Dee Bost here and here.

This is really an impressive class Stansbury has put together here. We're talking close to the level, if not on the level, of a Kansas, Kentucky, Louisville, North Carolina, etc type class. We're talking Final Four level potential. Thats right, I said it. Maybe we should ask him if he would want to start recruiting for football too? Just a thought. Assuming Gordon goes pro next year, we have one more scholarship left to give. If he happens to stay, then we are done for '08. Which would be fine with me.

Mississippi State fails to close on the road....again. Part II

Alright, time to take another look at this thing now that I've had a chance to take the emotion out of the equation. I watched the game again this morning and was hoping to take on a pretty ambitious project. The goal was to break down individual possessions and grade players based on a very simplistic +1/-1 system. Then add up the +/- and see what I got. In the end, offensive performance was emphasized far too much for my liking, so I had to scrap the results. If I can figure out how to tweak my system, I will start posting the breakdown for every game that I'm able. Don't count on it though, this method of grading works much better for football and quiet honestly I'm not sure how to get it to translate over to basketball. In any case, its time to move on.

In hindsight I may have been a little harsh on Jamont Gordon. He does play out of control at times, 5 turnovers in the first half as evidence. He does try to drive to the basket, only to end up surrounded by defenders too often. He also scores about half the time on those types of plays. Yes, I really hated the last play of the game. Everyone knew Gordon was going straight to the basket. I would much rather have gotten Stewart or Hansbrough a look. Sure, supposedly he was going to kick the ball out if anyone was open, but I don't believe that was ever going to happen. Even had all 4 of his teammates been wide open, he was going to keep it all the way . On the other hand, without him would Mississippi State have been in position to tie or take the lead on that final possession? Hard to say, but I would guess no. Those other 39 minutes have to count for something.

I am not going to back down from the comments I made about "moral victories" though. You know what I heard a Bulldog fan say today? "I'm proud of how hard this team played. How can you expect them to be winning games at teams like Tennessee and Kentucky?" and "How can you criticize this team. The game was at RUPP ARENA." Is this what it has come down to at Mississippi State? That is a loser mentality if I have ever seen one. So they should have just forfeit yesterday's game? Why exactly shouldn't they be winning games at Kentucky, at Tennessee, at LSU, etc.? I don't know about you but I want more than mediocrity out of this team. Are they playing hard? Absolutely, but they need to start winning these games.

Mississippi State fails to close on the road....again.

The road troubles continue to plague Mississippi State as they fell at Kentucky 64-60, dropping them to 10-6 (1-2) on the season. I'll write up something more substantial on the game after I've calmed down a little. Right now, all I can think of is how tired I am of this mythical "moral victory". I'm sick of hearing "they played a good game BUT,". No, they lost. They didn't play good enough. In the meantime, I'm going to ponder just how wise it was for Gordon to be jumping into triple teams for half the game in what I will have to assume was a horribly misguided attempt to score.

Slater leads the way over rival Rebels 77-67

Mississippi State broke a 3 game losing streak and improved their record to 10-5 (1-1) . Dietric Slater was a force off the bench, pouring in 16 points and 12 rebounds to notch his 4th career double-double. Rhodes returned to the starting lineup and led the Dawgs in scoring with 17 points to go along with 8 rebounds. Barry Stewart was his usual solid self, scoring 12 points off the bench, and the thing I was most excited about....7/7 from the line. Finally, someone on this team can knock down some free throws.

Unfortunately I was not able to see the game. I did catch it on the radio, but any nitpicking or praise from me based on that would be nothing more than a shot in the dark. I will make note of a few interesting facts from the game though. Jamont Gordon was pulled out of the game in favor of Ben Hansbrough around the 12 minute mark in the 2nd half and never returned. Was this because of an injury? Seems unlikely since 24 hours after the game nothing of the sort has been reported. This leaves poor play as the reason, which makes sense considering he had shot 3 air balls at that point. Stans had this to say,

"I just thought we had some other guys playing well and I didn’t think Jamont [Gordon] was at his best tonight."

Good enough for me. Now, back to Rhodes, he led the team in another statistic....turnovers, with 6. He has been showing signs of playing at the level he was at last year these past two games though. Hopefully the turnover problem will fade soon enough. Free throw shooting was poor yet again outside of Stewart, and State had 17 turnovers. It has become apparent that this is not going to change this season. The team is what it is, turnover-prone and bad at the charity stripe. It would be pointless for me to bring it up game after game after game, so....I won't. In the future, unless I say otherwise, you can go ahead and assume Mississippi State had an obscene amount of turnovers and shot about 60% from the line.

Let's wrap this up on a positive note though. State dominated inside, outscoring Ole Miss 40-18 inside the paint. That is about as lopsided as it gets. The Bulldog bench also outscored the Rebel bench 32-7. Again, lopsided as it gets. If they can continued to control the inside and get that kind of production off the bench against tougher competition, look for them to spring an upset or two. Unfortunately that is a very big if. Finally I have to give credit to Dietric Slater. I've never been a big fan of his as a player. He's always seemed wild and out of control offensively. Every time I looked up, he was the one taking the shot between three defenders and, of course, missing it. Last night, he was arguably the best player on the court, though. Keep showing me how wrong I was about you Slater.

Bulldogs Lose 3rd Straight.

Mississippi State fell to 9-5 (0-1) after losing their conference opener at Tennessee. State trailed the entire game until 15:10 left in the 2nd half when they took the lead 58-56. Unfortunately they could not hold it as Lofton scored 11 points in the final 6:21 to lead Tennessee to the 92-84 victory.

This is a very frustrating loss to take. We'll get to why in a second, but first......I really do try and maintain a positive attitude about things. Always looking for that silver lining. I've had to force myself to do that alot with the Dawgs. ....I'm looking at you Croom. So after this loss was no different. So, lets take a gander at the positives.

This team played a pretty darn good game on the road against the 19th ranked team in the country. Far far better than they played at George Mason. (Not a bad loss though, right?? I mean, they were in the Final Four last year!!!......What? They're 0-3 in their conference? 0-3 in the CAA? Are you serious? I don't even know what the CAA stands for. God, we must suck.) Far better than they played against Missouri. cough....24 turnovers...cough. Another positive, Charles Rhodes decided to actually show up ready to play. After playing horribly for 3 or 4 games, he put up 15 points and 10 rebounds off the bench. Now thats more like it. They'll need good play from him the rest of the season. Jamont Gordon was a monster. 25 points, 11 rebounds, 9 assists. I mean, come on, seriously. And finally, only 14 turnovers.....actually that's not all that great generally speaking, but for this team, its terrific.

See look at that. Look at all the great things Mississippi State did in this game. Aren't you feeling better about the future already? Well before you do, let me mention why this loss was so frustrating. First, even with all the positives in the game, State still lost. They played a great game....and lost. .......Not good. Another problem, when I say they played a great game, I have been talking about the offense. The defense, not so much. Subpar would be the polite way to describe. And then there's those nasty old free throws. 10-19, 53% from the line. Way to go.

I don't know what to make of this team. It's very talented, it really is. They do alot of things well. The turnovers hurt them as well as the poor shooting from the stripe, but their is something else. I don't know what...I'll have to mull it over. Anyway, we got Ole Miss in The Hump on Wednesday. I cannot tell you how bad they need this game. There is more than state pride on the line.

Stewart leads MSU win in Miami

Freshman Barry Stewart scored a career high 22 points in State's 70-52 win over the Miami Hurricanes last night. True, his career thus far consists of 8 games, but this is still impressive considering he was a reserve guard in this game. Charles Rhodes played limited minutes as his wrist continues to bother him. Vernon Goodridge and Jarvis Varnado filled in well enough though as they combined for 12 points and 11 rebounds. Jamont Gordon had 12 points, 8 assists, and 7 rebounds in yet another solid performance.

So, just how big of a win was this? Well....it doesn't have the impact of beating a team like UCLA, but with 2 losses already, I would rate the importance at 7/10. This was a road game....Mississippi State hadn't won a true road game since they beat Jacksonville State on December 15, 2005. Even that was in Jackson, Mississippi. If you want a win outside of the state you have to go back to November 23 of that same year, a win over Charlotte. That's over a year! So, yeah, I would say any road win at this point is pretty darn important.

Let's also not discount the effects this may have on potential NCAA tournament consideration. If a team is sitting on the bubble come March, which is where I see Mississippi State being, one factor among many that will help seal their post season fate will be non-conference victories, specifically road victories. Its not a win that will yank your attention away from other bubble teams, but it will add some shine to the resume.