State is ready to take on Wildcats

State is ready to take on Wildcats



Mississippi State’s Dee Bost delivered when the game was on the line Saturday night, helping the Bulldogs stave off a not-so-hot Auburn squad 85-75 in overtime at the Humphrey Coliseum.

On Tuesday night, however, Bost and the Bulldogs get a chance to shake things up in college basketball.

On that night, Big, Bad Blue comes to Starkvegas, and the MSU student section is going to be waiting for John Wall and the third-ranked Kentucky Wildcats. In force.




It’ll be a mad atmosphere, to be sure, when Mississippi State locks horns with John Calipari’s Wildcats. Kentucky comes at you in waves, just as Calipari’s Memphis Tigers did in recent seasons. The difference, of course, is that Kentucky usually has premier talent, and that is certainly the case with this UK squad, which sports a 24-1 record.

Rick Stansbury, the Bulldogs’ veteran coach, grew up in Kentucky and knows what Calipari has put together in just a few months in Lexington. I’m still trying to figure out how Billy Gillispie actually got the UK job, once Tubby Smith high-tailed it for the tundra of Minneapolis, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

Calipari’s ‘Cats are quick. They’re tenacious. They’re deep. They turned back a solid Tennessee squad on Saturday night in The Lex, winning 73-62 after the Vols entertained thoughts of an upset for 30, 32 minutes.

Mississippi State is going to have to be on top of its game, and the Bulldogs are going to have to play out of their minds, to have a shot in this one. Can they do it? Sure. South Carolina beat Kentucky, and other than point guard Devan Downey, there’s nothing exceptional about the Gamecocks.

(Well, their coach, Darrin Horn, did play at the dear ol’ alma mater, Western Kentucky, and acquired his coaching chops in Bowling Green before going Benedict Arnold and taking the money at South Carolina. But the Gamecocks are 14-10 right now, and they lost to lowly Georgia over the weekend. Shoulda stayed at Western, my man. Less pressure, more karma.)

Anyway, for the Bulldogs to have a chance, they’re going to need big games from Bost, who scored a career-high 32 points against Auburn, and senior center Jarvis Varnado, the human swat machine who will soon become college basketball’s all-time blocked-shots leader. Varnado had 12 points, 10 rebounds and five blocks in the Auburn game. He’s the real deal.

State has won 18 games against seven defeats and sports a 6-4 record in SEC play. If the Bulldogs want to play their way into the NCAA Tournament, a victory over Kentucky would almost assure that happening for the seventh time in nine years. Kentucky figures to be a 6- or 7-point favorite, but the Bulldogs are certainly capable of striking for the upset.

They’ll just have to play the game of their lives to do it.

The kind of effort we saw against Auburn isn’t going to cut it.

“You’ve got to find ways to survive,” Stansbury said when it was over. “This is one of those games we survived.”

Kentucky is another animal altogether, and no one has to tell Rick Stansbury that is the case.


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