Dee Bost and His Mississippi State Legacy

Dee Bost is one of the most beloved players in Mississippi State basketball history, but what is his legacy as a player.

Dee Bost was a talented player for the Mississippi State Bulldogs. He came in at a crucial time for Rick Stansbury. Jamont Gordon had just left one year early to seek a professional career in basketball, so the Bulldogs were in desperate need of a point guard.

In stepped Dee Bost. Bost assumed the point guard responsibilities even though he had never played the position in high school. Through his four years as a Bulldog he averaged 13.4 points a game, five assists, and 1.6 steals per game.

He is arguably one of the most beloved players in the history of the program. This tweet I aw watching the Bulldogs play Ole Miss on Saturday gave me the inspiration for this piece.

But does the love for Dee Bost match up to what he did on the court? That’s what I am wanting to explore with this particular piece.

Why we love Dee Bost
There are a lot of things to love about Dee Bost. He was an absolute Ole Miss killer. He seemed to shine when the spotlight shined brightest as well. Here’s a sample of his highlights from his freshman and sophomore seasons.

Bost could play, and throughout the last four years of his career at Mississippi State, Rick Stansbury leaned heavily on the talented player. The Bulldogs won a lot more games than they lost with Dee Bost as the point guard, and they wouldn’t have had a prayer of competing without him.

The glaring deficiencies in the career of Dee Bost
As good as he was, there are still things about Bost that makes me always think that he could have been so much more. Bost had a habit of making really bad decisions. In his four seasons as a Bulldog, he only shot 38.4% from the field. Dee Bost had a habit of taking ill-advised and terrible shots. He would pull up with players blanketing him or try to take on two or three opponents at a time.

Part of the reason he took a lot of ill-advised shots came from his overconfidence. After his sophomore season, Bost declared himself eligible for the NBA Draft. He didn’t hire an agent, so most Mississippi State fans assumed Bost would find out his prospects and head back to Starkville.

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We learned after he declared Bost was willing to go ahead and leave Mississippi State, even if he couldn’t get drafted by the NBA. Bost was planning to head overseas and make a nice living playing professional basketball in some other part of the country. The reality was he had yet to do anything to make himself very attractive to any professional teams.

The overconfidence in himself led Dee Bost to assume he wouldn’t be back and not take care of what he needed to in the classroom. He wasn’t eligible for his first semester of his junior season, and because of expenses he needed to pay back for inquiring into his professional prospects, he was suspended for the first nine games of the spring semester of his junior season as well.

This led to a domino affect of bad decisions by the Bulldogs to try to weather as much as they could without their starting point guard. Mississippi State scheduled four games in four days from December 11th through December 14th to get as many games in after the fall semester before SEC play began so Bost would miss as few games as possible in the SEC portion of the schedule.

The Renardo Sidney affect
One of the things that sticks out from the Dee Bost years was the overwhelming shadow Renardo Sidney held over the program. During Bost’s sophomore season, the team spent much of the season wondering if Renardo Sidney would ever be declared eligible. The team was supposed to be really good, but it was all contingent on Sidney being on the floor with Jarvis Varnado.

Once Sidney finally made it on to the court in Bost’s junior season, it was apparent he would be more trouble than he would be beneficial. The question is how much Bost could have done to help ease the transition.

When the Bulldogs went to Hawaii to play in the Diamondhead Classic, Bost was not allowed to make the trip because he was still serving his suspension. Renardo Sidney and Elgin Bailey got in a fight in the stands during one of the other games of the tournament and led to Bailey leaving the team and Sidney continuing his hijinks. Bost himself said had he not messed up in the previous offseason, he would have been there to keep Sidney out of trouble.

With the insane antics of Sidney being tolerated on a daily basis, the Bulldogs needed a strong leader on the team. Bost would have been the natural player, but it never seemed to happen. In 2012, Mississippi State entered the last seven games of the season with a 6-3 record in SEC play. The Bulldogs lost five straight and six of their last eight games including the first game of the SEC Tournament. The Bulldogs needed their senior leader to right the ship and rally the troops, but Dee Bost and all the other players on the team never stepped up to fill the role.

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Dee Bost was a lot of fun to watch. When he was on top of his game, there were very few players on the opposition who had a chance of slowing him down. But for the Bulldogs never accomplished much with Bost at the point guard position. The only time the team made the NCAA Tournament was his freshman season after a miraculous run through the SEC Tournament. Dee Bost may have been a lot of fun to watch, but his lack of accomplishments on the floor keep him from being considered an all time great.