MSU News & Notes | Championship Sunday
It’s a beautiful Sunday – and it’s Championship Sunday for the Lady Bulldogs!
Women’s Basketball
State defeated Tennessee on Saturday after beating Vanderbilt in their first game of the SEC Tournament in Jacksonville, Florida. That bring us to today, when at 1:30 they’ll tip the ball vs. South Carolina. The Gamecocks have had another solid season: 28-1 and ranked #2 in the country.
This will be the second time in program history the Lady Bulldogs have made it to the championship game. A win today would be our first ever SEC Tournament championship. It’s been a season of firsts including beating Tennessee for the first time ever, and then the second time ever just last night.
Men’s Basketball
MSU beat up on Auburn Saturday afternoon at the Hump. That coupled with a Tennessee loss to Ole Miss enabled the Dawgs to leap into the No. 11 seed of the SEC Tournament. With Missouri sitting this year’s conference tourney out on self-imposed probation, that’s good enough for a bye in the first round. So the Bulldogs will play No. 6 seed Georgia on Thursday night (late game).
Malik Newman was back in full force vs. Auburn with 17 points off the bench. If he’s fully healthy for the tournament, with the way the team has played the last three weeks (4-2), you have to think they have a good shot at making a run in Nashville. A win vs. Georgia would lead to a match-up with South Carolina on Friday.
Baseball
The Diamond Dawgs were unable to beat UCLA (again) on Saturday night. It was a 2-1 loss after a great performance from their starting pitcher. Dakota Hudson wasn’t too shabby himself, going seven innings and allowing just one earned run.
State moved across town to play at Southern Cal on Saturday and picked up a 8-7 win. Jack Kruger stroked his 3rd home run of the year in the 4th inning to get the lead which the Bulldogs would not relinquish.
Today’s game will be played at Dodger Stadium vs. Oklahoma. First pitch at 1:00 (brunch in L.A.).
Other
- Peyton Manning retired today. He really had a remarkable career. After missing a year and a lot of people thinking he was done, you could take his career with the Broncos in a vacuum and it’s a phenomenal four years: 1 super bowl win, 2 super bowl appearances, 3 years with #1 seed in AFC, all 4 years with a bye, MVP award, 3 pro bowls and broke the single season mark for most touchdown passes. All that was AFTER a Hall of Fame career with the Colts.
- I’ve had a ton of B-B-Q pork (shoulder, boston butt) in my life. There is the really good to the mediocre. A lot of people invest a ton of money into their B-B-Q hobby, and that’s fine, but you really don’t have to do that to cook your own tasty pulled pork. If you have a great smoker you’re going to get the best results, but you can also produce a really really good pork shoulder on the simplest of Weber grills. Just put plenty of coals on the fire, add some hickory (or other) wood chips to it and throw on the meat – get that char on the outside of the meat and let it soak up the flavors for 4-6 hours. By then the grill will have died out, so just keep it cooking in a low temperature (200-225) oven until you reach 8-10 hours depending on the size of the butt. You’ve already got the flavor in the mean from grilling, so I don’t see anything wrong with the oven here, and it’s so much simpler than continuing the grilling process.