I will be the first to admit that I am and was a huge Stansbury supporter. Basketball is my favorite sport and really over Stansbury's tenure, basketball was our most successful sports program. I will always be grateful to Rick Stansbury for his 20+ year tenure and everything he did for the program. He was really the first to challenge the status quo at MSU and say "we can" vs. "we can't".
With that said, I was very impressed with Rick Ray's debut. I have been expecting the worst. We are very well coached and played with good effort. Defensively, we played with the grit and effort that we used to see early in Stansbury's career. We simply don't have the horses this year. We have some freshman that will be good. Sword is going to be a stud. Gavin Ware has potential and Fred Brown looks like he could develop into a very good player. We have a long way to go on the offensive end of the floor, but that is typical at the beginning of the year and with a young team to boot. This script can be flipped pretty quick with one or two solid recruits to go along with this year's freshman class. Basketball doesn't take much to change.
Troy's new arena is as nice as there is. It is small (5,000 +), but I haven't been in a nicer arena and I have been to Auburn's new 90 million dollar arena. I think Troy did a better job. They had HD jumbo trons on each end of the court. It was sweet! The place was rocking too. I was impressed that our young guys kept their poise in that environment for the most part.
I met Craig Sword's family. They were good people and so proud that Chicken was playing at MSU (they were all wearing MSU jerseys with #32 and Chicken written on the back of the jersey).
With that said, I was very impressed with Rick Ray's debut. I have been expecting the worst. We are very well coached and played with good effort. Defensively, we played with the grit and effort that we used to see early in Stansbury's career. We simply don't have the horses this year. We have some freshman that will be good. Sword is going to be a stud. Gavin Ware has potential and Fred Brown looks like he could develop into a very good player. We have a long way to go on the offensive end of the floor, but that is typical at the beginning of the year and with a young team to boot. This script can be flipped pretty quick with one or two solid recruits to go along with this year's freshman class. Basketball doesn't take much to change.
Troy's new arena is as nice as there is. It is small (5,000 +), but I haven't been in a nicer arena and I have been to Auburn's new 90 million dollar arena. I think Troy did a better job. They had HD jumbo trons on each end of the court. It was sweet! The place was rocking too. I was impressed that our young guys kept their poise in that environment for the most part.
I met Craig Sword's family. They were good people and so proud that Chicken was playing at MSU (they were all wearing MSU jerseys with #32 and Chicken written on the back of the jersey).
