As a writer, one of the advantages of covering a coach like Rick Stansbury (who was hired when I was in the second grade) is there is plenty of long-term trends and statistics to find.
With an RPI of 144 according to realtimerpi.com, the popular consensus is the Bulldogs only chance of making the NCAA Tournament is winning the SEC Tournament. This got me wondering where other Stansbury-led Bulldog clubs have landed in the postseason after accumulating records similar to their current 13-12, 5-6 SEC mark.
While there may be teams with similar records, there is certainly no doppelganger for a team that saw two starters sit on the bench with suspensions well into December, a nationally televised fight in paradise, followed by two transfers and a suspension created 140 characters at a time. That is what makes this squad one of the most fascinating sub-100 RPI teams in the nation.
It’s like watching an amateur clown juggle china plates: at moments it looks awesome, but occasionally a plate crashes to the ground in spectacular fashion.
Now that I have my horrible similes out of the way, let’s try to find a former Stansbury team that has been in this boat before, and what the postseason bids looked like.
Last year, the Bulldogs were doing a little bit better in mid-February (18-8, 6-5), but even coming a Demarcus Cousins tip-in away from winning the SEC Tourney was not enough to make the Big Dance. The Bulldogs made it to the NIT as a No. 2 seed.
The 2001-02 and 2008-09 teams are eliminated from comparison because they received an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament by winning the SEC Tournament. The 1999-2000 and 2005-06 teams were slightly worse off than the current bunch (believe it or not, this is not the lowest of the low.)
The 2003-04 squad and 2007-08 team featuring Jamont Gordon and Charles Rhodes would run circles around the 2011 Bulldogs. Those teams took pride in defense and rebounding, something that has been a rare sight this year.
The 1998-99 team that went to the NIT after compiling a .500 mark in SEC play is close, but as Goldie Locks would say, the 2000-01 team is “just right.”
Take a closer look. The 2000-01 team went 18-13, 7-9 in SEC play and was never very consistent in SEC play. With five regular season games remaining (two come against quality opponents Ole Miss and Tennessee), the current Bulldogs record could easily end within one or two games of that mark. In 2001, the Bulldogs (important note: those Bulldogs had a top-40 RPI, at least putting them in the bubble conversation) won two games in the NIT before losing in the third round to Tulsa.
The best part about the comparison: both teams feature a McDonald’s All-American playing in the post whose initial eligibility came under scrutiny by the NCAA. Standout Mario Austin missed six games his junior year as the NCAA investigated whether the classes he took in high school met initial eligibility requirements, which he had cleared two years earlier.
Senior Tang Hamilton put up numbers similar (12.1 ppg, 8.1 rpg) to current senior forward Kodi Augusts (11.8 ppg, 7.3 rpg).
This may seem like a pointless comparison, but it is worth noting that while that 2000-01 team took its lumps on the court, the next four seasons all ended with NCAA Tournament berths, as well as one overall SEC Championship.
While this season looks to be on the fast track to the NIT, the Bulldogs have plenty of pieces coming into place for next season. Headlined by Meridian standout Rodney Hood, Stansbury has put together one of his better recruiting classes in recent memory. If the remaining underclassmen stay on campus, there will be a considerable amount of talent suiting up at The Hump next year.
While the future looks more optimistic than the present for the Bulldogs, the current group is something that is hard to turn your back from.
So why not watch MSU play its rivals from Oxford tomorrow? You never know what you’ll get.