Back On That Road

Mississippi State plays its third road game in 12 days with Wednesday’s trip to Knoxville. The Bulldogs have lost their last two road games, at Auburn and at Alabama, so naturally we all wonder what makes “that road,” as coach Rick Stansbury calls it, so tough. “The thing that makes every venue difficult is the team you’ve got to go against,” he said at today’s media gathering. “It might not be a very difficult environment if that team’s not very good. But if you put a good team in that environment, then you’ve got a difficult environment, a difficult situation, and that’s what Tennessee is.”

So how tough is Tennessee (16-10, 7-5 SEC) at home? Overall, the Volunteers are 9-4 at Thompson-Boling Arena, including a 4-2 mark in SEC play. The losses came against Gonzaga (89-79, OT), Kentucky (90-72), then-No. 22 Memphis (54-52) and LSU (79-73). Some pretty stiff competition there, and as we know, UT has the league’s highest RPI (25).

“They had some great wins early. They haven’t been as consistent of late. They haven’t played as well on the road of late for sure,” Stansbury said. But he warned that the Vols are like a hand grenade waiting to go off (my metaphor, actually): “Tennessee has enough talent to get on a roll and be as good and as consistent as anybody in this league down the stretch.”

MSU (17-10, 7-5) sure needs to get on a roll. Now would be a great time, what with Auburn, Florida and Ole Miss to follow the Tennessee game. As expected, Stansbury tried to deflect talk of postseason speculation. “If it was against the deaf and blind, it wouldn’t matter right now. They all count as one win and one loss. It’s just the next game,” he said. “We’re trying to win games; who it’s against, at this point it doesn’t matter.”

Don’t think the players don’t understand the magnitude of this one, though. “To have an NCAA chance, this is one of the games that we’ve got to have,” freshman point guard Dee Bost said. I’ll have more on Bost and his fellow Bulldog youngsters later this week.