As the regular season basketball schedule winds down, Mississippi State finds itself with 15 wins overall, and a good shot to make it a 20 win season. The remaining SEC games are tough, bruising affairs as they always are, but MSU has the talent, such as the school’s all-time leading shot blocker, to make good things happen.
Wait, which team am I talking about? Both, actually.
While men’s head coach Rick Stansbury has senior shot-blocker Jarvis Varnado, women’s head coach Sharon Fanning-Otis has his counterpart, senior forward Chanel Mokango. In just two season, Mokango already holds the school career record for blocks.
Another current Lady Bulldog dominating the record books is senior guard Alexis Rack. Rack is MSU’s career leader in three pointers, and is only 17 shots from tying the all-time SEC record as well. Every time she touches the ball, Rack is a threat to score – from anywhere on the court, it seems.
Still another Lady Bulldog to watch is senior guard Armelie Lumanu, who along with Mokango and senior center Rima Kalonda, is part of the trio from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lumanu may be the most athletically-gifted player of either program. Anyone who has watched her play has seen the ferocious intensity with which she pushes the ball down the court on a fast break.
But therein lies the problem – few people actually come to see the Lady Bulldogs play. Earlier in the season, I asked Fanning-Otis if playing in a mostly empty Humphrey Coliseum is a problem, and she said it was just something women basketball players are used to.
Not exactly. If you play for a team with strong hometown support, like Tennessee, you are used to much bigger crowds than the one to two thousands sprinkled around the Hump. Over 10,600 watched an exhibition game against Delta State in Knoxville at the start of the Lady Vols’ season, more than the 10,500 seating capacity of The Hump. The last time the Lady Bulldogs went into that hostile territory, they had to play with the eyes of over 15,000 angry orange fans bearing down on them.
Fans of college basketball know how much of an effect the crowd can have on games. Players draw strength from the emotion of the crowd, and student sections like our own Rick’s Rowdies make sapping the will of the opposing teams a top priority. Seeing the women play at such a high level without that extra source of energy shows how good these athletes really are.
At the home game against Alabama, I noticed Anthony Dixon sitting court side having a good time and asked for his thoughts.
Dixon said he loved watching the MSU women dominate the Crimson Tide.
“I heard they’re always there supporting us, so I had to show them some love back,” he said. “I think the whole MSU family should come and show support because they play for not only themselves, but the whole Bulldog Nation.”
If it seems like I’m scolding MSU fans for forgetting that our women athletes are setting records too, well maybe I am. But Mississippi State has two more home games this season, and the next one is on Valentine’s Day against Ole Miss.
What better way to show the Lady Bulldogs some love than to pack the Hump to the rafters and loudly send That School Up North back to Oxford with a broken heart?