The additions of former Big 12 students Shane Power and Lawrence Roberts may have caused some Mississippi State basketball fans to overlook the team’s top freshman recruit. Now, it’s a bit tougher to see past the 5-foot-11-inch Gary Ervin.
Head coach Rick Stansbury brought the Brooklyn native to Starkville to be used as a backup point guard for team co-captain Timmy Bowers. But Ervin has been such a stick of dynamite off the bench lately that people are wondering if a promotion might be at hand.
“It’ll never be his team as a freshman point guard,” Stansbury said. “You can’t start everybody, and you can’t always start your best five.
He shifts gears, and the timing of it is great because I can slide Timmy back over if he’s fatigued and let him rest a little bit at that two spot.”
Recently, Ervin has done more than give Bowers a breather.
Against Kentucky, Ervin left the pine to record 11 points, four assists and four steals in 21 minutes. His effectiveness peaked in the first half when he triggered a 7-0 MSU run.
“He’s got superb quickness,” Dick Vitale announced on the ESPN broadcast. “He explodes with the basketball.”
At Louisiana State, Ervin first entered the game at 15:14 in the first half. He stole the ball and laid it in with a foul 48 seconds later. He also dotted the exclamation point of a 17-0 State run with a two-handed fast-break dunk. Ervin finished the game with a career-high 13 points-seven of which came in the final 5:19 when the Bulldogs needed to recapture the game.
“Playing in front of 12,000 is kind of hard,” said Ervin, who then added that playing at home is more difficult for him. “When you’re playing on the road, everybody’s against you and that’s going to make you work very hard.”
Maybe that’s because he’s become accustomed to playing with the deck stacked against him.
“He’s not intimidated,” Stansbury said. “If you saw him on those playgrounds (in Brooklyn), you’d understand. Some of those guys he’s going against want to cut you or shoot you after you play.”
But has that helped Ervin at the Division 1 level?
“In Brooklyn on the streets, it’s hard fouls, getting thrown to the floor, people trying to intimidate you. I think it’s helped me once I got to college,” Ervin said.
A teammate agreed.
“He just had to adapt,” Branden Vincent said. “When he first got here, he was unstoppable-especially when you’re free-playing and there’s not a referee. I’m sorry, but there’s just no way you can guard him.”
Impossible to defend? He’ll truly get a chance to prove it next year, since Bowers is a senior.