Saturday’s Open Scrimmage – The Rest of the Story by 001

By now you have read the posts on the internet sites and Arliss’s columns about the scrimmage. You can even go to the mstateathletics.com web site for a write up and the game statistics. What I would like to convey to you are the things you had to be at the game to see in person and a few things that have never been reported. First, the team is in great condition. They proved this by the up tempo play which consisted of two 20 minute periods, a one minute overtime in the second and then finally the 12 minute period. You could tell they were getting tired in the 12 minute period, but they ran the entire game. Defense has shown improvement between the closed scrimmage and the open scrimmage. We, and I think this is because of how well they are conditioned made it through the 2 a day practices without injuries. I feel that we now have at least 3, possibly 4 men that can come in off the bench and be productive. Our starters being Gordon, Stewart, Hansbrough, Rhodes and Varnado. And coming off the bench being Turner, B. Johnson, Bailey and Augustus, Turner and Augustus being the first 2. Phil Turner plays with speed and intensity and toughness. In fact one of the things no one knows is that after Friday practice, Phil and Jamont were fooling around one on one and ended up banging heads. Phil had a small knot on his head and Jamont has 4 stitches above his eye. So, yeah, Phil can be tough. The most pleasant surprise was the way Kodi ran the floor and was verbal and set great picks for Jamont and the other guards. A little more experience at rebounding and defense and he’ll see playing time. Phil has a smooth 3 point shot and it tells in the statistics as he went 7 for 9. Elgin has come a long way since the closed scrimmage also. He is starting to play at the level we expected him to play at. The most telling thing in this scrimmage was the constant movement of both the players and the ball. It was some of the best passing I have seem us do in several years. No one was standing around with the ball and players were constantly moving to try and get open. And finally, Brian Johnson. He played OK, but I thought his knee was giving him problems because he tended to favor it and at times was actually limping some. Rest assured it is not his knee. I was in the basketball office this morning and talked with several of the coaches. Seems right at the beginning of the scrimmage someone knee’d Brian in the thigh and gave him a tremendous bruise. That was what caused his non-stellar performance. Now I will throw in a few interesting statistics. We went 25 of 57 on 3 pointers, 76 of 167 overall, 72 or 97 on free throws, 39 assists, 38 turnovers, 9 blocks and 14 steals. Can’t wait until we start playing some one else instead of each other. With what I observed Saturday, we will we should be able to run our oppositions legs out from under them this year. ‘GO DAWGS!!’ -001