As the leaves turn golden and fall off the trees, the Mississippi State University men’s basketball team is gearing up to take the hardwood this weekend. They will play an exhibition game on Sunday and a game against Austin Peay State University a week later.
Head coach Ben Howland said he purposely made their non-conference schedule this season much tougher than it was last season.
“It already has me nervous hearing how good they are from everybody,” Howland said.”Their best player is a friend of Aric Holman. Both are from Kentucky, and they played with each other during the summer. The guy is really a good player, and I’m thinking down the road to our first of the year. Our schedule, our non-conference schedule, has purposely been much tougher from where it was a year ago. It’s a much harder schedule, and we have no easy games on there.”
Howland also gave an injury update on Nick Weatherspoon, a sophomore guard from Canton, who returns to the team after averaging 10.8 points per game in his freshman season. Weatherspoon injured his ankle in preseason practice and has been out for 16 days with a sprained ankle.
“Weatherspoon is due to be back in practice today,” Howland said. “We’re excited about having him back. It’s actually a little earlier than we anticipated from when he initially hurt it. We feel like we’ve been pretty conservative and patient in, hopefully, getting this thing right before we put him back out there.”
MSU goes into the season ranked at No. 19 in the USA Today pre-season polls. Howland said while it is good to be ranked, the team has to remember they have to show they deserve it in practices and games.
“I think rankings are always nice going into the season, but in reality, a week from Friday they mean absolutely zilch,” Howland said. “It’s good notoriety for the program, and I think it’s nice that people have high expectations for this team and this group. You still have to go out and prove it.”
Abdul Ado, a sophomore forward from Lagos, Nigeria, agreed with Howland, and he said the team will have to compete in practice in order to compete on the court, since a lot of teams they play are at the same skill level, if not better.
“Regardless, you have to bring it day in and day out,” Ado said. “A lot of teams are probably just as good as we are, if not better. We have to compete every day. It always starts in practice.”
Aric Holman, a senior forward from Owensboro, Kentucky, said the team will also have to stay focused and fight for their wins every single week. Holman returns for his senior year after averaging 10.9 points per game and 6.7 rebounds per game.
“At the end of the day, we still have to go out and do what we have to do,” Holman said. “We can’t get locked in and focused on things like that. We’re still a program that has to go out and fight every night. We have to keep thinking like that and take it one day at time.”
The team will certainly have a chance to prove themselves this Sunday in their exhibition game against Georgia Southwestern State University. This game starts at 2 p.m. The Bulldogs will play Austin Peay at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 9, in Humphrey Coliseum.