STARKVILLE | Dee Bost sat down at a table in front of a few reporters here earlier today, and one of them asked a simple question: “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” the Mississippi State point guard said. “Tired.”
People laughed, because they knew he was telling the truth. Today marked State’s first day off after a stretch of four wins in four days that culminated in Sunday’s SEC Tournament championship, and the Bulldogs were certainly glad to get it.
MSU met with reporters prior to a 2:30 p.m. team meeting. But there was no practice today, affording players their first period of rest since last week.
“We’ll practice tomorrow,” MSU coach Rick Stansbury said. “We’ve just got to figure out what time for sure.”
State (23-12), seeded 13th in the West Region, will play Washington, seeded fourth, at approximately 3:45 p.m. CT Thursday at the Rose Garden in Portland, Ore.
The team will leave via charter flight Tuesday and will have an open practice at the tournament site Wednesday.
What else did we learn today?
• Bost knows Washington PG Isaiah Thomas from his days in prep school. Bost played at Hargrave Military Academy; Thomas at South Kent School in Connecticut. "My team won by 20, but we both played hard," Bost said. "It was an equal matchup."
• I learned a lot about Phil Turner for a story that'll appear in Wednesday's Clarion-Ledger. I wondered, basically, what Turner is saying when he's running his mouth on the floor. Talking trash? Talking to teammates? Talking to himself? "To be honest, I really don't know," teammate Barry Stewart said. "And to really be honest, he's doing a little bit of everything." Said Bost: "Most of the time he's talking to himself. I don't know, he's in his own world. Especially in the court, you can just look at him and tell he's in his own world. He's just talking to himself."
• Jarvis Varnado thinks Sunday's game changed when he blocked Scotty Hopson's shot. "That got everybody going, ready to win this game," Varnado said.
• Stansbury touted Varnado's ability not just to block shots, but to block them in a way to where he or one of his teammates can recover it (as opposed to blocking it into the stands, etc.). So he challenged The Blog to stay up all night trying to figure out that stat. I told him that I needed something to do on the airplane tomorrow, so there's that.
• Stansbury said Varnado has a strained groin, but Varnado, earlier, said he was fine.
• So, Turner, if State hadn't have offered a scholarship, where would you have gone after high school? "I was planning on going to the Army."
• On Varnado's matchup with U-Dub's Jon Brockman, Stansbury isn't too worried: "I don't put a lot of thought into that matchup right now, if that means anything."
• Stansbury may have had the quote of the day when asked about his own 13-seed. His response: "You know the team that got the worst draw in this tournament? It's Washington. ... And I don't mean that in a negative way."
• Stansbury said Elgin Bailey, injured on March 4, will travel to Portland. He couldn't make it to Tampa after having being fitted with a cast for his ankle the day before the trip.
(Edited at 5:04 p.m. to correct a misattribution of a quote in the first bulleted item. Bost said it, not Thomas.)
Original Story:
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbc...
