Mississippi State News and Notes

Here are some things happening around Mississippi State athletics:

Mississippi State is ranked #24 in the AP poll and #25 in the Coaches Poll. The Bulldogs are 0-2 as a ranked team this year and 6-0 as an un-ranked team. That would seem to not bode well for State as they face Missouri this week. But – State has not played as a ranked team by the College Football Playoff Committee or perhaps it’s just that MSU is 0-2 against ranked teams and 6-0 against un-ranked teams and it’s just a coincidence they played them while ranked.

MSU women’s hoops begin the year ranked #11 in the AP poll. The Lady Bulldogs advanced to the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament last year and hope for continued improvement this year. The men’s team was not ranked in the AP top 25, nor did they receive any votes.

Taveze Calhoun was announced as a finalist for the Campbell Trophy. This award is the equivalent to the academic Heisman, so congrats to Taveze for even being considered among the 12 finalist.

MSU announced a new pitching coach this past week: Wes Johnson. Here’s an interview with him via Bulldog Sports Radio…

Quick take on Dan Mullen’s injury policy that caused a stir last week when he lashed out at the media, particularly Mike Bonner who broke the news of Will Redmond being out for the year. If Mullen’s policy is that he doesn’t talk about injuries that is fine, but there’s no need to keep lashing out at people for asking. Simply say “no comment”. And if that’s the policy, then the SID should escort the media member who asks such a question at a press conference out of the room and say come back next week and don’t ask an injury question. There’s no need to continue to act like a child about it, especially when a fan asks the question.

Basketball has a scrimmage against Fort Valley State on Friday at the Hump (7:00). Be sure to listen to the Brick City Dawgs basketball preview show.

Yesterday, November 2nd, marked the 5th anniversary of Nick Bell’s passing in 2010.

SEC Nation is coming to Starkville for the Alabama game. Last year the SEC Network crew of Joe Tessitore, Tim Tebow, Marcus Spears and Paul Finebaum all agreed Mississippi State was the most raucous and exciting crowd they had all year when they came for the Texas A&M game. I know there were a couple of factors that contributed to that including a 4-0 record and 11:00 kick, but let’s make it two years in a row. The Bama game will either be at 2:30 on CBS or 6:15 on ESPN.

Watch Dan Mullen’s Monday press conference.

Finally, a quick take on something not really MSU related: Saturday Down South. Last week they dismissed their CEO, Drew Roberts, after he was arrested and basically turned SDS into a glorified frat house with TMZ-style reporting and a lot of tomfoolery. SDS is basically a giant blog like we are, they just cover 14 teams. They got big by buying other people twitter and facebook accounts – so instead of starting from the ground up they paid off the person who built those social media accounts aimed at SDS’ target fanbase. They own such great handles as @Bama, @Aggies, @MissState, @SECFootball and many more. It was a brilliant strategy as they were able to turn a SEC football blog into a thriving business with all the people those social media accounts brought to their site. I don’t know how they initially got the capital to buy those accounts, but from their actions it screams daddy’s money – and once the revenue started flowing in they treated SDS like a frat boy with a new toy oblivious to any consequences to their actions. They created ill-received game days signs, attacked prominent writers on twitter and created fake social media accounts to troll people. Saturday Down South was screaming from the hilltop, ‘look at me!’, when really they should have kept their nose to the grindstone and continued their previous success, which was collecting SEC news at a central location and providing some interesting reading material. They have never been media, but just a site that re-purposes other’s material. M&WN is similar in that fashion (although we try to take to give our take on the news rather than just regurgitating it), and it’s easy to criticize them when we have been nowhere near as successful, but it’s a good lesson for us all to not get too big for our britches.