Mississippi State News & Notes | January 27, 2016
The Iowa caucuses are next week, a California town is about to fall into the ocean and the first month of 2016 is nearly up. In the world of MSU sports, however, none of that matters as we grind towards National Signing Day and continue on with SEC basketball.
Recruiting:
- 3-star athlete Jamal Couch committed to MSU on Sunday. He’s 6′-5″, 217 lbs from Phenix City, AL.
- Baseball and football standout Zach Farrer committed to State last week. On the gridiron he’s a 6′-4″ wide receiver.
- The Bulldogs have 15 total commits in the 2016 class and are currently ranked 44th by 247 Sports.
National Signing Day is one week from today – February 3rd. Things look pretty bleak right now, but a lot change change in the final week. Most likely, State will move up in the rankings as they’ll hit on a couple of the following targets. If they were to land a handful of them they’d vault into the top 20.
- 5-star DE Jeffrey Simmons
- 4-star WR A.J. Brown
- 4-star CB Nigel Knott
- 4-star OT Scott Lashley
- 4-star DT Kobe Jones
- 4-star DE Emmit Gooden
- 5-star DT Derrick Brown
The first five listed are all from Mississippi. A.J. Brown and Kobe Jones are from Starkville.
Basketball: once again a solid effort by Ben Howland’s group but it wasn’t enough to take down South Carolina on the road. Michael Carerra scored 34 points for the Gamecocks who are now 18-2 on the season.
The Lady Bulldogs lost to South Carolina as well, on Sunday at the Hump. It was a sold out arena for the first time in women’s basketball history, and roughly 3,000 more than any other game. It was close at the end but State was unable to convert some baskets in the final minute and #2 USC walked away with the win. MSU fell to #13 in the polls.
Football:
- by now you’ve heard that CB coach Deshea Townsend took a job with the Tennessee Titans of the NFL (same position). He came to MSU from the Arizona Cardinals where he was an assistant secondary coach. Thanks for your three years of service, Deshea and best of luck. No word on a replacement.
- BYU has decided to schedule our game this fall for a Friday night instead of Saturday. It will be played on October 14th on either ESPN or ESPN2. That mean’s a short week when traveling out to Utah, but it goes both ways as the Cougars will be coming off a road trip to Michigan State and the Bulldogs host Auburn the previous week.
Baseball: State was ranked 20th by Baseball America. That makes four polls to rank the Diamond Dawgs for 2016:
- Collegiate Baseball: 11th
- DI Baseball: 15th
- Perfect Game: 17th
- Baseball America: 20th