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MSU News & Notes | Thursday, November 15, 2012

All of your MSU News and Notes for Thursday, including an update on injured Bulldog basketball player Jalen Steele, the Wednesday SEC teleconference, several Bulldog recruits sign early for basketball and baseball, and more.

By cristilmethod

And just like that, we are heading into the next to last weekend of the college football regular season. Every year we get so excited and anxiously await football, and every year the season gets here and then just like that, it's over. You would think we would have learned by now, but we haven't. It still makes us sad each time. MSU gets ready for its final home game of the 2012 season as the Arkansas Razorbacks come to town this weekend for a pride contest. Arkansas is looking to get some of theirs back and try to finish at 6-6 after a disastrous year, and MSU is trying to stop the bleeding caused by a three game losing streak where the average margin of victory was, well, high. Not to mention the fact that there is a 22 game home sellout streak in jeopardy this weekend. A lot to talk about in today's News and Notes, so let's get to it fellas (and ladies):

Today's tweet of the day:

That tweet will only make sense to those who watch The League, and are watching Season 3 currently (sorry to everyone else).

  • As I mentioned above, MSU's 22 game sellout streak for home football games is dangerously close to coming to an end this weekend. Today Scott Stricklin released his weekly column updating fans on the current events at State, and one of the items mentioned was that MSU still had slightly less than 1,000 tickets to sell for the game this weekend. This isn't an impossible number to accomplish, but an 11:21 kickoff and a team riding a three game losing streak won't help matters much. Come on State fans, lets push it to 23 straight games!
  • Yesterday was SEC teleconference day for the football coaches of the SEC, and both MSU's Dan Mullen and Arkansas' John L. Smith took part. You can catch audio for both at the links attached to their names. Here are the transcripts for Mullen and Smith's talks as well.
  • So, Mississippi State basketball is currently stuck in a place where it never stops raining and the next door neighbor's dog just keeps biting the crap out of your ankle. It wasn't enough for State to lose two players already to ACL injuries, so now the injury bug has bitten again. We found out yesterday that Jr. guard Jalen Steele is out 6 weeks with a fractured left wrist, an injury he suffered Tuesday night diving for a ball against Florida Atlantic. The good news is that Steele should be back just in time for SEC play, the bad news is that MSU has 8 games in that time frame and 7 healthy scholarship players to use in those games... wait, make that 6 scholarship players to use. At least for the Maui Invitational. That's right, just after the injury announcement last night, we also found out that EMCC transfer Colin Borchert has been suspended for a violation of team rules and will not make the trip to Maui. MY GOODNESS. So now State will travel to one of the toughest in-season tournaments around to take on #11 North Carolina and potentially several other ranked teams with 6, THAT IS SIX TOTAL, scholarship players. Don't expect Rick Ray to feel sorry for his team or himself, he will still demand 110% of the 6 left and the walk-on's that are called upon to play. I will say this: big kudos to Ray for sticking to his principles despite the situation. He could have easily let Borchert slide due to an already thin traveling group, but he didn't, and in the long run I think that is much more important than 3 games that we probably would have lost anyways. Ray is setting the tone early on that you will play by his rules or you will not play at all, and I love that. If you think Rick Stansbury would have ever done that, then you are either kidding yourself or you are huffing that Elmer's glue in your desk ( not judging you for doing that, though). This team will be fine in the long run, especially with a coach at the helm who demands excellence from his players not only on but off of the court as well.
  • Yesterday was also the first day of college basketball's early signing period for prospects. MSU was no stranger to the signing process as the Bulldogs saw JUCO forwards Quantel Denson and Travis Daniels sign with the maroon and white yesterday. Denson and Daniels both have been committed to State since early October. We also found out late yesterday evening that PG prospect I.J. Ready has signed with Mississippi State as well, giving the Bulldogs three signed prospects for the class of 2013 out of the four committed. The only remaining unsigned prospect is recent commit Fallou Ndoye, who is expected to sign. Or did he already? This may have just been a representative kind of thing, not an actual signing. If nothing else, the above linked picture shows you the amount of talent that Ndoye is playing with at his new school, Findlay Prep, this season. Also, kudos to Rivals' Logan Lowery for finding a bunch of signing day related tweets across the interwebs. Here's just a few of the many tweets Lowery found yesterday in relation to MSU signing day(s):

And my favorite one of all:

  • In addition to being men's basketball's and baseball's signing day yesterday, it was also signing day for the women's basketball team. Coach Vick Schaefer was able to land 4 talented players for this year's signing class, from areas ranging from Texas to Connecticut. Congrats to coach Schaefer for a good first class.
  • More details on the exact contract with Harrell Contracting Group have emerged (the contract for the north endzone expansion). The $62 million is below the budgeted $80 million set originally by MSU, and lower than the announced total cost of $75 million. Can you say cutbacks? With a number that low, it worries me as to what may have been cut out of the project. You don't just shave 13 million off a price by having a guy who can get you cheaper water pipe. I trust this administration, but that number seems a bit low to me to get everything done, or more importantly, to get the west side renovated along with the north endzone. Make no mistake, that west side renovation is as important if not more than the new north endzone is to that stadium. Croom Diaries is more knowledgeable in the construction business than I am though, so we will wait to let him chime in to see what he thinks about that.

That's it for today's News and Notes. Have a good one!

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