001 Reports

MSU vs OKC – Slow start and a big finish

If you were not at the game or watched it on M2M, you missed a good show. After a slow start, our guys came on strong in the second half. Unlike the first game where Coach Stansbury substituted in blocks, tonight he put in just a couple at a time, and the team play showed it to be the right thing to do. When you compare the players first half stats to the final stats, you can see the improvement we have all been looking for. All the starters had a good game. The starters being Gordon, Hansbrough, Stewart, Rhodes and Varnado. Coming off the bench and contributing in different ways were Turner, B. Johnson Benock and Bailey. I would have to say that Augustus and R. Johnson performances show that they need more work. The defensive play was good but had some occasional sloppiness in spots. In the first half, most of our points were by the starters, with Hansbrough leading the scoring with 9 points. Outside of the starters the only other scoring in the first half was by B. Johnson with 6 points and Turner with 3. We were out rebounded in the first half by OKC by 23 to 20. In the first half, Varnado and B. Johnson had 4 rebounds each and Rhodes and Stewart had 3 each. One other important point of interest is that Barry Stewart did play quite a bit of PG in tonight’s game. Overall, our offensive and defensive game got much better in the second half.
We ended up out rebounding OKC 46 to 38. High scorer for the game was Gordon with 20 points, 4 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 TO’s, 1 block and 3 steals. Hansbrough and Varnado both had 16 points each, Stewart had 13 points, Rhodes had 5 and Benock had 9 points on 3 for 3 from behind the arc. I watched Benock rather closer tonight. This kid is going to be a good one on down the road. He plays tough and really in your face defense. These guys are coming along nicely. What they really need to get tougher for game play. And that will only come in hard practices and game experience. After going 5 of 11 on 3’s in the first half, we ended the night with 11 of 25 for 44.0%. In closing, let me say that Coach took all of the starters out at about the 3:30 minutes mark and mass substituted with freshmen. Then with just over a minute let in the game, he pulled most of them out and put in the walk ons and mop up players. With just under a minute the score at 97 to 67, walk on Brandon Bolen hit 1 of 2 free throws and then a short jumper to move our score up to 100. Mentioning the free throw brought up a bone of contention. We have to improve in this area sooner rather than later. We were a dismal 11 of 25 for 55% tonight.
This has to improve along with our rebounding. “GO DAWGS!!!” -001