The last weekends with the homemade LFL rigs should be fun

Somehow, someway, Mississippi State has the best record in the SEC (13-5) with four weeks to go. Auburn (12-6) is coming to town this weekend, and LSU (10-8) the final weekend, sending the Left Field Lounge in its current form out with a bang.

Construction of the new LFL is set to begin after the season. There’s been plenty of hand-wringing over the past three years about the permanent structures that will be built in their place, but in the end the only thing that will change is the safety of MSU baseball fans.

Will the charm of the LFL go away? Well, I guess if you consider mobile-home park style tailgating to be charming, then yes. But there will still be grills and flags and socializing so I don’t think the atmosphere will feel much different….other than you can feel secure as you walk around that you will not be impaled.

Auburn comes in riding high from a series win over Arkansas (12-6). They’ve really emerged this year under Butch Thompson, and now face their second straight weekend of playing the 1st place team while being one game back in the division.

After road trips to College Station and Athens, the Diamond Dawgs will come back to host LSU. As always, a series with the Tigers will be hotly contested and have plenty on the line. Andy Cannizaro coming from LSU only adds fuel to the fire. That’s one heck of a series to end the regular season.

If things go as planned, the LSU series won’t be the last for the old rigs to see as State would be hosting a Regional.  The Bulldogs currently have an RPI of 19 – that coupled with the best record in the SEC would certainly have them hosting.

LSU actually has a higher RPI (13) than Auburn does (22), so from that stand point it’s a bigger series, even though the SEC standings don’t say so right now (but things could certainly change in three weeks). Texas A&M’s RPI is 42 and Georgia’s is 109. There are also mid-week games against Ole Miss (40) and Troy (123).

But for now, we should just assume there will only be two more weekends of baseball at the Dude with the homemade rigs because as has been said a thousand times, this team is patched together with duct tape and super glue….and there is still a lot of work to be done to secure a hosting spot.

Enjoy the rigs for what they are, but embrace the new cleaner and safer Left Field Lounge to come. The next month or so should be pretty exciting as we watch the Dawgs truly defend their SEC championship.

The Diamond Dawgs are playing with house money and it’s fun to watch

When you lose 10 key players off a SEC championship team you know you’re in for a rebuild. Add in a new coaching staff and you’re assured of growing pains.

When there aren’t enough fingers on your hand to count how many pitchers have gone done with long-term elbow injuries you’ve got to figure it’ll be a long year.

So no one was really expecting the 2017 Diamond Dawgs to do all that much. Sitting at 12-10 (0-3) in late March was not really a surprise.

Yet this team has sloughed off the notion that they will are resigned to a lost season. They’ve won 10 of 12 games and are now in a three-way tie for 1st place in the West (four-way tie in overall SEC standings) at 8-4.

Brent Rooker is having the type of season reminiscent of Rafael Palmeiro in the 1980s or J.D. Drew is the 1990s.  Other hitters are stepping up and the pitching staff made up of glue, rubber bands and aluminum foil is getting the job done.

How long will this success last? I really don’t know. To be honest, I kind of expect it to all come crashing down to earth at any moment. But sweeping Ole Miss on the road and taking two of three from #10 Kentucky at Super Bulldog Weekend was pretty enjoyable to watch.

This season feels like we are playing with house money. A postseason appearance, or any success in the postseason would be like a bonus.

If Andy Cannizaro can piecemeal this team to the Regionals it’ll be fun to watch the outcome. I won’t feel like I need to sit on pins and needles though, because just getting to that point would be surpassing expectations.

 

Putting the 2017 Lady Bulldogs’ season into perspective

April 2, 2017 was the first day in the history of Mississippi State team sports that Bulldog fans woke up to the possibility of winning a national championship that day. It was only the second time to play for it all in any team sport, but this was the first time to be just one win away.

In the end, the Lady Bulldogs came up just short of a national title. Congrats to South Carolina who kept MSU from the SEC regular season championship, tournament championship and national championship. They were the source of 60% of the Bulldogs’ losses this year.

The sting of defeat when you’re so close is palpable. Especially for a school that has never experienced a national championship (in a team sport).

The funny thing is, if State had just lost to UConn by 10 or 15 points like they were supposed to we’d all be a lot more comfortable with the finish to the year: a Final Four run!

But the take away from the 2017 MSU Lady Bulldogs’ basketball season has to be that moment of exhilaration in beating UConn…..at the Final Four. No grander stage in college basketball in which to end the greatest winning streak in college basketball and do it in the most thrilling fashion.

What a game that was. Five years from now college basketball fans won’t remember that South Carolina won the national title, they’ll remember that Mississippi State ended UConn’s 111-game winning streak at the Final Four.

Mississippi State was playing over their heads in the final few games of the season. They beat Baylor and UConn in route to the championship game….and that’s quite an accomplishment.

This is a program that’s new to the scene of elite women’s college basketball. There is a core group of teams in that sport that dominate year in and year out: Stanford, Baylor, UConn, Notre Dame, etc. South Carolina is a relatively new member of that group but they’ve been there now for about five years.

Mississippi State is just in the beginning stages of a run like South Carolina has started under Dawn Staley. It was in her fifth year that the Gamecocks ascended to elite status, just as the Bulldogs did in this Vic Shaefer’s fifth season.

What Coach Shaefer has done in just five years has been incredible. Take a look at the last five years of men’s and women’s basketball at MSU. It’s comparable because both programs hired a new coach after the 2012 season to replace their longtime head coaches (Sharon Fanning and Rick Stansbury).

SEC women’s basketball is considered to be a lot stronger than SEC men’s basketball, making what this program has done in such a short time even more remarkable.

I’m never a big fan of suggesting that a team who just made an unprecedented run will be back again the following season. There are just too many variables such as injuries, team chemistry or loss of leadership that factor in.

The key component of when and if State can reach the Final Four again and play for a national championship is whether or not they’ll have a sustained run of success as a program to compete for it each year.

2017 was South Carolina’s fourth straight year as a No. 1 seed – it took them that long to get over the hump, and it was only their second time to make the Final Four in that span. The key is consistent winning.

As long as Vic Shaefer is the head coach of MSU you have to believe that a sustained run as an elite program in women’s college basketball is a probability. I don’t know how long he’ll be in Starkville, but I do know he’s already provided me with more excitement for the Lady Bulldogs than I’ve ever had.