One of the aspects of a great team is its ability to deal with adversity. When players go down to injury, other players have to step up and take their place with little or no drop off in play.
Mississippi State’s test has arrived. Winsome Frazier is lost for most likely the rest of the year due to a broken foot.
The senior guard, State’s best defender and second leading scorer, rose up to block a shot Saturday against Mississippi and landed funny on his left foot. X-ray’s showed that he had fractured his fifth metatarsal bone. Surgery was needed to insert a screw into his foot to stabilize it.
The question that the Bulldogs must ask themselves now is who will step up and take his place?
Rick Stansbury has said that guards Jamall Edmonson and Dietric Slater will have to. Stansbury said that he will likely start Edmonson in Frazier’s place but will pretty much split the minutes evenly between the two of them.
The two guards had been seeing between 10 and 15 minutes of playing time per game but their role will expand exponentially with Frazier sidelined.
So will Edmonson step up? The 5-foot-9 guard is a great three- point shooter. He has demonstrated it game after game. If you leave him open for even a second, he’ll bury a three no matter how deep it is. Shooting 47 percent from behind the arc, Edmonson has proven what kind of spot up shooter he is.
But that’s pretty much all he has shown he can do so far. He hasn’t shown that he can create a shot off the dribble or play solid defense consistently.
That doesn’t work when you play for Stansbury, a coach who emphasizes defense and rebounding. Edmonson has worked with Stansbury this year in trying to improve his defense, but it will take some time.
It will take even less time now that Edmonson will be counted on to contribute more than knocking down open three pointers.
How about Dietric Slater? No one has to worry about defensive intensity with him. The question with Slater is whether he will play in control.
Stansbury has said time and time again that he loves the energy Slater brings off of the bench. While Slater does give the team great energy, sometimes he doesn’t know when to slow down and play in control.
A perfect example of this was last Saturday’s game against the Rebels.
Slater grabbed a rebound
started racing up-court at breakneck speed. He got away with carrying the basketball only to lose the ball out of bounds as he tried to pass it to a teammate.
Slater’s energy and intensity can be the Bulldogs’ best friend or its worst enemy.
Slater can do great things with the basketball such as delivering no-look passes or great drives to the rim. He can also play out of control and commit turnovers and silly fouls. If Slater can learn to play with energy and in control, he will improve the Bulldogs greatly.
So will the Edmonson-Slater combo work? Can they pick up the slack and fill the void that was created last Saturday in Oxford? The answer will decide if Mississippi State is truly a great basketball team or just another pretender in the SEC.