STARKVILLE — Friday night at Humphrey Coliseum was an evening of firsts for the Mississippi State basketball programs.
For the first time in more than a decade, MSU celebrated in a public Maroon Madness pep rally for the fans to get an initial look at the teams for the 2011-12 season.
The announced crowd of 4,535 were introduced to two newcomers on the men’s basketball squad. Forwards Arnett Moultrie and Rodney Hood will be asked to contribute significantly if MSU is going to contend for the Southeastern Conference championship.
Moultrie, a 6-foot-11 transfer from the University of Texas El-Paso, is a player MSU men’s basketball coach Rick Stansbury described all of last season as his “best player.” Moultrie averaged 9.8 points and 6.7 rebounds two years ago for the Miners.
In his first games at MSU jersey, Moultrie averaged 16 points and 11 rebounds in a five-game European tour earlier this year. Half of his rebounds came on the offensive end.
Hood is the key piece of a recruiting class that was ranked in the top 20 nationally. He arguably is the best in-state prospect since Stansbury was given the head coaching job in 1998. The 6-foot-8 wing player from Meridian High School averaged 24.8 points per game and 8.4 rebounds per game and led his team to a Class 6A state championship. Hood was a first-team All-State performer in his final two seasons at Meridian, and was the 2011 Gatorade Mississippi Boys Basketball Player of the Year. He signed a National Letter of Intent with the Bulldogs in the early period in the fall.
“His biggest thing will be to go get stronger (and) play with the physicality that the college game demands but his adjustments are normal adjustments,” Stansbury said Wednesday. “He’s ahead of most curves because of where he’s come from and his family life. He has no cracks in his armor. I love Rodney Hood for what he is and what he’ll become.”
The Maroon Madness pep rally was created to help MSU begin to promote its 100th year of basketball. The school will introduce its all-time team as the season progresses. One of MSU’s best returning players, Dee Bost, used his Twitter account to encourage the MSU administration to have something in front of the fans when practice started.
Friday night also served as the first opportunity to introduce the new Dawg Pound student section created by MSU Student Association President Rhett Hobart. Before the festivities, Stansbury spoke to the 20 student organization leaders who debuted the new white T-shirts.
Bost, was one of 50 players named to the Wooden Award Preseason Watch List this week. The 6-foot-2 guard enters his final college season with 1,120 career points. He is 65 assists shy of breaking the school record of 514 set by Derrick Zimmerman from 2000-03.
“When I saw Dee Bost on the Wooden Award list, I just forgot about him and thought he’d already graduated,” college basketball analyst Doug Gottlieb said on the ESPNU college basketball preseason podcast.
Friday night also represented the fans and media’s first look at junior center Renardo Sidney since the end of last season. Sidney didn’t go on the preseason European trip and instead returned to Houston, Texas, to work out with former NBA player and coach John Lucas.
Sidney, who averaged 14.2 points per game with 7.6 rebounds last season for MSU, spent a majority of this past May and June working on his conditioning at Lucas’ camp. He told local reporters July 11 he lost “23 pounds.”
“Here’s the thing, you’ve got Renardo Sidney and Arnett Moultrie (and) if those two guys can stay on the floor and play together that’s imposing a full line as potentially anybody in America,” ESPN college basketball analyst Andy Katz said on the podcast.
Stansbury said Wednesday that Sidney made it through the MSU strength and conditioning program for the first time in his college career.
“We’ve had no incidents, and his challenge, like always, will be that conditioning,” Stansbury said.
MSU’s women’s team, which scrimmaged for 20 minutes in front of the Humphrey Coliseum crowd, returns four starters from last year’s squad that won three of its last four games.
It what had to be the largest crowd she has been in front of, West
Oktibbeha County High School product Shamia Robinson leads a group of newcomers. Robinson averaged 18.8 points and nine rebounds per contest last season.
“We are excited about the newcomers on this year’s team,” MSU women’s coach Sharon Fanning-Otis said. “We think they can come in and contribute immediately.”
When asked about the men’s basketball ‘It’s Our Turn’ media campaign and the ‘Our State’ motto, Stansbury said he continues to concentrate out of the state for competition in an SEC that will only have one division.
“Like I’ve always said, I don’t worry about our state,” Stansbury said. “I worry about Kentucky and I worry about Florida. That’s the people I compete against. That’s the way that’s been.”
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