Monday Morning Ramblings
Here’s some sports takes for your Monday morning…
Basketball beat Alabama, on the road, Saturday. Nice win – and they did it without Malik Newman. Alabama was probably the hottest team in the SEC so a road win was pretty good. The Dawgs may be putting it together a little bit: 5-9 in conference play and they’ve won 5 of the last 9.
Is Stingray a good luck charm? MSU’s most famous internet fan went to his first men’s basketball game on Tuesday when State beat Vandy on a buzzer-beater, then he goes to the win in Tuscaloosa. Someone get him a plane ticket and a good seat in College Station for Wednesday’s game at Texas A&M.
You may have figured it out by the general absence of basketball posts on the blog, but I’ve just lost interest in the sport. I knew we were playing Bama but didn’t bother to find out what time the game was so I completely missed it. Nothing against this team, I think it’s basketball in general. I bet I’ve only watched 20 total minutes of non-MSU college basketball this year. So if you like basketball and writing, e-mail me at maroonandwhitenation@yahoo.com – you can be our hoops guy/girl.
MSU athletic department marketing has done a pretty good job with promoting the school. But I’ve had enough of the sunshine pumping. Most of it comes with baseball.
Sure, there’s a handful of national polls that ranked State in the top 20 so they were hyping the Diamond Dawgs. But our athletic marketing team/SID was hyping them non-stop.
At some point you reach the level of hype in which a player can do nothing but disappoint the fan base. All off-season it was Dakota Hudson this Dakota Hudson that, he’s the next Chris Stratton, etc. He goes out in his first inning of the year and looks mediocre at best. That doesn’t mean he’ll have a bad year or won’t be the next Chris Stratton, but can we just chill with the hype…..especially for a guy (and this goes for nearly the entire team) that hasn’t done it before.
Then after a very disappointing 2-2 opening weekend they are tweeting out a bunch of positive stuff about statistical league-leaders. Save it – we want wins, stats are just gravy. If you’re going to provide stats, fine, but give me the bad ones too. Pump the sunshine all you want when times are good, but when we’re losing – a theme going back to 2014 – I don’t want to hear it.
If you’ve made it this far in the post, pat yourself on the back. You read my rant and didn’t get your panties in a wad because I wasn’t all positive about something MSU-related.
Lastly, let’s discuss women’s basketball. This team is very good but has lost a few games lately. With a RPI of 31, that doesn’t bode well for hosting NCAA Tournament games.
If they aren’t able to get a top four seed, they’ll likely be a five like they were last year. I have to say with the way the year started that’s a pretty big disappointment. There haven’t been any significant injuries to account for the slipping late in the year, so it’s just disappointing (not that they can’t do well as a five seed).
Can we catch a break as Mississippi State fans from disappointment? Baseball, women’s basketball, recruiting. I know most of the fan base has conditioned themselves to be disappointed by the NCAA’s potential punishment (or lack thereof) of Ole Miss. When are we going to build that baseball stadium – no news isn’t good news.
I guess the softball team hasn’t disappointed so far, they are 9-0. Which is great but I just don’t have time for so many sports. I can’t pay attention to 50+ baseball and softball games at the same time, and give my family and job their due attention. Why not play softball in the fall when there is only football, volleyball and soccer. Why must we bunch so many sports in the spring?
It’s raining so I’m grouchy?
Non-sports take: I enjoy music, specifically country music. I bought Easton Corbin’s latest album yesterday, and it featured a song from his previous album. I have all three of his albums, so I had heard the song before. Why did he put it on another album?
He didn’t change the musical arrangement. He didn’t change the lyrics. It wasn’t a greatest hits album or a compilation.
I found this irritating. Why did he do this?
I will say his other albums have 11 songs and this one has 12, so there are 11 new songs plus the re-used one. And I do like the song, “Are You with Me”. I just don’t get it.
The album is pretty good. He’s basically a George Strait knock-off but that’s 106x better than the crap on country radio today. I can’t stand that junk….except for Chris Stapleton – he’s good….real good.
Get off my lawn.
If you made it to the end, bless your heart. Or bless mine, I need to drink some happy juice, ha. I’ll think of something more uplifting tomorrow, or later in the week.
Love,
Josh