Mississippi State’s men’s basketball team has a lot going for it approaching the start of the regular season. The Associated Press ranked MSU 12th nationally in the preseason poll, and the Bulldogs are coming off one of their best seasons in recent history in which they captured the SEC tournament championship. This year, one of State’s biggest advantages will be height. Two 7 footers, redshirt freshman Wesley Morgan and sophomore Marcus Campbell, will be coming off the bench for MSU. With 6-foot-10 Michal Ignerski and 6-foot-9 Mario Austin and Lincoln Smith already in the lineup, the 7-foot duo should be a nice addition down in the paint.
Campbell insists that he’s not just out there for blocks and rebounds.
“Because I’m big, people don’t think I can do certain things like
ball-handling or shooting,” Campbell said. “For my size, I can do those things pretty well.”
Campbell, who played about seven minutes a game as a freshman, saw 22 minutes per contest in MSU’s two exhibition games. In those appearances, he tallied two double-doubles and shot 68 percent from the field.
With a wingspan of 7 feet 4 inches, Campbell hardly has to jump to dunk a basketball. He can jump, though, and when he does, his size-17 shoes get a good bit of elevation. When Campbell dunks, more than the defender feels it.
“I broke a goal overseas once,” he said. “I was playing in Europe, and the goal broke when I dunked the ball.”
Campbell, in his second year under head coach Rick Stansbury, says that Stansbury certainly isn’t intimidated by his size.
“He expects a lot out of us,” Campbell said. “Sometimes, he expects more than you expect of yourself. It all depends on the person.”
Campbell has been relatively enormous since kindergarten. He can’t fit into many midsize cars, so he drives a roomier sports utility vehicle. Oddly enough, Campbell’s parents stand at average heights. His mother at 5 feet 5 inches, barely looks up to his father at 6 feet.
Neither of Morgan’s parents even reach the 6-foot mark, but he is the tallest member of the team at 7 feet 2 inches.
Last year, Morgan sat out with a medical redshirt. He didn’t see any action on the court in the preseason either, and he’s expected to be out for several more weeks due to recent surgery.
Morgan has stood taller than his peers as long as he can remember. Just before entering the sixth grade, he was to 6 feet. By his junior year in high school, Morgan reached 7 feet.
Except for the basketball court, the world isn’t equipped for someone Morgan’s height.
“I sleep on a queen-size bed, usually curled up, or I sleep slanted with my pillow in the corner,” he said.
When he went to amusement parks as a boy, Morgan met the height minimums for rides long before any of his friends his age.
“I kind of picked at them a little bit, but then it got to the point where I was too big for some rides,” Morgan said.
When people see Morgan for the first time, they often react the same way.
“I get a lot of looks just because people have never really seen anybody as tall as me,” Morgan said. “They’re always asking me how tall I am, what size shoe I wear, if I play basketball. It’s a daily occurrence. You get used to it.”
On the court, Morgan and Campbell feel more at home playing with people closer to their sizes. While size is one of State’s biggest assets, it’s not the biggest, according to Campbell.
“I feel like we can win because we’re a close-knit unit whose played together for a while,” he said.
According to Morgan, this close-knit unit has one goal–a national championship.