Mississippi State lost to Alabama A&M on Sunday afternoon at the Hump. I'll repeat: Mississippi State lost to Alabama A&M. Yep, a SWAC team - the same conference that Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State are members of. AL A&M was 3-7 coming into this game, so it's not like they are a SWAC outlier.
This game featured the return of Jalen Steele from his wrist injury, and he scored 10 points - so waiting on his return is out the window I guess. I've already thought about skipping basketball season, like John Grisham wrote about Skipping Christmas (how did Christmas with the Kranks not make TBraden's Top 25 Christmas movies again?). I think there's a way to do it..
Of course, football season is not over - there is a big bowl game on Tuesday morning/afternoon against Northwestern. Hopefully we'll win so we can glow for a week or two, but even a loss and we'll get to bicker for a week or two.
Then we'll turn our focus to recruiting, which already has a corner of our eye. Mid-late January is when official visits are tracked like Air Force One and message boards reach their peak each year. National Signing Day is February 6th, so that gives us a good solid month to just talk about football recruiting without ever having to think about basketball.
After NSD we'll have to transition to the Diamond Dawgs. This year's team is preseason ranked #13 in the country so there's plenty to be excited about. And the season starts early (which is good) on February 15th with a home opening FOUR game series vs. Portland (I guess Portland wanted to get their money's worth if they're flying to Mississippi).
So baseball should cancel out the last month of basketball season. The key will be blocking out that time frame from Feb 7-14....and you'll really want to because we play Florida and Missouri. I guess focusing really hard on the perfect Valentine's Day present is the best approach. Best Valentine's Day ever brought to you by Rick Stansbury blowing up the basketball program and the injury bug having a seriously intense hankering for some maroon blood.
I don't blame Rick Ray. I don't blame the players. It just ain't happening this year. I said a few months ago on our radio show I thought we'd win more football games than basketball games, I still believe it. It's tough to watch...so I won't.
If you're a student, you did not read this. Go to the Hump, support the team. Bring a pint if you must.