MSU News and Notes | Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Success! After a successful opening day at the 2012 SEC Tournament, State looks to continue the winning ways as they take on LSU this afternoon at the Hoover Met. Here's your News and Notes to get you ready for today's action, and to catch you up on other MSU news:

• Behind a solid performance by Fr. Brandon Woodruff, MSU used a 6-run 9th to pull away from Arkansas, winning 9-1 in the opening day's action for the Maroon and White. Woodruff was as outstanding as you could ask a young pitcher to be in this situation, working his way out of jams several times and giving the Dogs a solid 5 innings of work. Big Wes Rea covered Brandon on the offensive side of things, belting a HUGE 3-run HR early in the game that ended up being enough to seal the deal. First thoughts on the game: it's obviously great to see the team continue to be hot coming off the sweep of Kentucky last weekend. Although they'd rather be playing Thursday with a bye today, I imagine State will definitely be up for the challenge of league champion LSU that awaits us.

• After State wrapped up our victory, the biggest ? became this: would Chris Stratton go Wednesday or be held until Thursday? We heard rumors he would go, then later in the day Tuesday it was confirmed that Stratton would in fact pitch Wednesday's game against the purple and gold. LSU, on the other hand, chose to go a different rout, saving their ace Gausman for Thursday action, and electing to throw Freshman Aaron Nola against State Wednesday followed by a committee of arms once Nola makes his exit. We even saw Ole Miss pitch their ace, Bobby Wahl, in the opening game of the tourney, so there are many different strategies that coaches chose to employ during this tournament. That's half the fun in itself: the mind-games and strategy that takes place between games.
• It continues to amaze me how this team finds different ways to score runs. This past weekend it was squeeze plays and bloop singles. Yesterday it was home runs and errors. It feels like State does just enough leaning on an opposing team until they finally break; at least that has been the case in the last two outings. We'll see if State can continue that against a very good LSU team.
• We missed this last week, but congrats to SS Adam Frazier for being invited to play with Team USA this summer. Frazier has been a rock for State this season, and this honor is much deserved. The biggest thing that stuck out to me from Matt's article linked about? The fact that John Cohen made a joke. I figured a Cohen joke would go something like this HEY ADAM HEY MEANT TO TELL YOU EARLIER BUT YOUR DAD CALLED YOUR 3 DOGS BACK HOME ARE DEAD HA TOTALLY KIDDING ADAM THEY ARE JUST ALL LOST AND PRESUMED DEAD MAN YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN YOUR FACE! John Cohen, NOT for joke teller of the year.
• New Bond trailer is out. In other words, CELEBRATION.
• Tanyaonthescene got an interview with our own James Carmon, whoever the hell tanyaonthescene is.
• WES REA HATES BROCCOLI I TOLD YOU MOM NO MORE GREENS MEAT ONLY GAH.
• Lost in all the baseball excitement yesterday was Justin Sutton's review of MSU football circa 1908, when we beat Edward Cullen's alma matter #teamedwardy'all
• Alcorn State alumnus Donald Driver won Dancing with the Stars last night. That's all the coverage I will be giving to that nonsense.
• Mark Etheridge of SEBaseball.com has apparently fielded LOTS of questions about MSU's chances to host a regional, so he finally addressed the issue here. For the record, we would definitely outdraw about 8 of those teams attendances COMBINED.
• The Hattiesburg American yesterday has a wrap on the Hattiesburg area stop of the "Our State Tour", and in it they noted where Scott Stricklin told the crowd they anticipate the end zone expansion to be complete by the opening 2014 game against Southern Miss. (STARTS GETTING EXCITED)
• Also noted in that recap was that the new $25M football complex should be done by January 2013. So yeah it'll be done in June #MSUconstructiondeadlines
• The Spirit board was, yeah in anything but high spirits after yesterday's 2-0 loss to Kentucky.
• Arnett Moultrie was one of 60 potential future NBAer's invited to this year's combine. Not on the list? Dee Bost and Renardo Sidney.
• Oh, what's the last we've heard about Renardo Sidney, you ask? THIS:

Renardo Sidney measured 304 pounds with 22.35% body fat percentage, by far the most here. Actually looks like he's slimmed down #NetsCombine

— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) May 19, 2012

Feel like maybe the John Lucas training video sales might take a hit soon.

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