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....... .......| 1996 | Oct | Nov | Dec | |||||||||
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| 1997 | Jan | Feb | March | April | May | June | July | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
| 1998 | Jan | Feb | March | April | May | June | July | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
| 1999 | Jan | Feb | March | April | May | June | July | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
| 2000 | Jan | Feb |
01/23/00 | 2000 Prospects01/23/00 |
1997 Signees | 1998 Signees | 1999 Signees
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03/31/00 - Spring Practice Comments, practice 8 of 15:
Comments and observations:
03/30/00 - Spring Practice Comments, practice 7 of 15:
MSU practiced in shorts and helmets with no pads. It was basically a day of teaching technique and plays. There was nothing much to report on. The team will be back in pads today. There will also be a coaching clinic going on today and tomorrow at MSU.
For those of you who are wondering, Fred Smoot is not practicing due to a groin injury.
Post-practice interview with redshirt freshman Justin Jenkins:
GS: Justin, how about talking a little about how your fall went?
Justin Jenkins: I was injured most of the fall but going against Fred Smoot and Robert Bean during the fall really helped me and the other scout teamers out. Coming into the spring it helped me to be really focused.
GS: You had a vertical leap of 40 in the Iron Dawgs competition. Have you ever attempted a vertical leap prior to the Iron Dawgs competition?
Justin Jenkins: Yes, I did it at the beginning of the year when I first got here but I never did it in high school.
GS: Switching to spring practice, how do you think that you have done so far?
Justin Jenkins: I think that I am doing OK. It is kind of rough when you get up to the line of scrimmage and you are having to think about what you have to do. It is kind of hard at first until you get all of your plays down.
GS: How do you think that you are doing catching the ball?
Justin Jenkins: Catching doesn't come natural. You really have to focus and it is not as easy as it looks when you are running full speed. Right now I am doing good catching the ball. So is everybody else.
03/29/00 - Spring Practice Comments, practice 6 of 15:
Interview with tight end coach David Wilson prior to practice.
GS: Coach Wilson how about talking about how each tight end has done in practice so far?
Coach Wilson: Donald Lee had a lot of carryover knowledge from the fall which has helped him. He feels a lot more comfortable. He has gained strength and weight. He is becoming a great leader on the field. He is very intense on his blocking. He is also a very good pass receiver. He has done a very good job the first part of spring practice. I am really pleased with his progress.
C. J. Sirmones has really stepped up and have become much more physical. He is a great receiver which has always been a characteristic of his. Right now we are working on his blocking and his intensity when blocking. That has improved some. I am pleased with his play.
Aaron Lumpkin is doing a very good job. He has improved his speed and quickness. He has gotten to the point where he is comfortable with his assignments in our offense. He has not had very many mental errors at all. He is very physical at 256 pounds. He is working on his pad level. We are working on keeping his pad level down. What I mean by that is we are working on him keeping down when he blocks. Tommy Ferrill has gained in strength and size and he is in the same class as Aaron as far as being behind in playing in the fall on the scout team. Now that he is getting individual instruction he is improving. He is a very intelligent young man and does not bust many assignments. He is a possession receiver, a trustworthy receiver. As he continues to gain in strength, he will become an all-around player. I think that he will end up being a player at Mississippi State University.
Jake Hambrick, who we moved back from the offensive line, has really worked hard on his catching ability. He is still a little bit stiff in his routes. We have to get him to relax when he runs his routes. We want him to run more fluid routes and he is working hard on that. He has his assignments down. He is a very good blocker. He has a chance to help this team.
Nick Brett, who came to us from East Mississippi CC, knows a lot about football because his dad is a coach. He has to learn the system and that has put him behind. His intensity is very good. He catches the ball well.
There is not a whole lot of difference in any of them. They are all working hard. I think that we are going to see very good tight end play. We are not going to miss anything from the standpoint of not signing a tight end this year. We feel that the guys that we have can do the job.
03/29/00 - According to my sources, Ingle Martin, the outstanding Montgomery Bell Academy (Nashville, TN.) quarterback who will, most likely, be recruited by MSU this coming season, has been invited to the Nike Football Camp this summer. This camp is by invitation only. There are only a few of these camps around the country. These camps are similar to the Nike Basketball Camps.
03/27/00 - Petal (MS) High School has a senior-to-be offensive lineman who very likely will be a highly recruited player next season. Chris McNeil, who is about 6-4, 275-lbs, benches 375 pounds and is academically very, very sound. You will hear about Chris next season.
03/26/00 - Spring Practice Comments, day 5 of 15 (1st scrimmage):
03/24/00 - Spring Practice Comments, day 4 of 15:
03/23/00 - For those of you who emailed me about my comments about football season ticket plans, MSU will offer a Family Plan package.
03/23/00 - Spring Practice Comments Day 3 of 15:
03/22/00 - The word is MSU will offer several different football season ticket plans this coming year. New to the season tickets package are two plans that will allow you to buy season tickets to three key games.
The first plan, which is called the Maroon plan, will be a season ticket package that includes the Florida, Middle Tennessee State and Alabama games. This will be a three-game, full-priced ticket plan. These seats will be assigned prior to the sale of any individual tickets.
The second plan, which is called the Economy plan, is a season ticket package that includes the Florida, Middle Tennessee and Arkansas games. According to my source, you will pay half-price for this three-game season ticket package. The economy plan seats will be located in the upper deck.
P.S. I was also told, if all goes according to plan, you should start seeing season ticket applications in your mailbox in about three and a half to four weeks.
03/22/00 (Premium site excerpt) - Spring practice update: Day 2 of 15:
Before I go any further, please remember these 1st and 2nd unit lists that I post below could change at any time. A player may be on the 1st or 2nd units due to a minor injury to another player that caused that player to miss a day of practice. Also remember MSU only uses four secondary players during the spring. Now read on.
Players playing on the 1st unit secondary during yesterday's practice:
Players playing on the 2nd unit secondary during yesterday's practice:
Players playing on the 1st unit offense during yesterday's practice:
An interview with linebacker Barris Grant:
GS: What does it mean to you to know that the starting linebacker job is yours now?
Barris Grant: It is a big step for me. I watched Barrin last year. He taught me some things. I'm ready to show everybody that I can do the things that he did but just a little better.
GS: Coach Sherrill and Coach Tompkins both have said that you can be an outstanding linebacker, maybe the best in the country next year. What does it mean to you to know that two veteran coaches like them are so high on you?
Barris Grant: It shows that they have faith in me. They believe that I can go out and do it on the field. I have faith in myself.
GS: And there was just something about MSU that you liked?
Barris Grant: It was these Dogs and these fans that got me down here. It was the Arkansas game. It was probable the loudest football game that I have ever been to. I went to the Kansas State and Nebraska game the week before and Mississippi State beat them out.
(My personal observations about Barris after interviewing him. This is a very confident (not cocky at all), smart, personable, slightly humorous, and likeable young man. I had never interviewed him before and came away very impressed and I formed the opinion that he will back up every word that he said in my interview. - Gene)
03/21/00 - The latest word is MSU signee Robert Spivey has made a better than qualifying score on his latest ACT results.
03/21/00 - Here is an excerpt from a premium site interview with MSU running back coach Glenn Davis.
GS: MSU signed one fullback, Darnell Jones. What do you like about him?
Coach Davis: Darnell was at practice today. He weighs 240 pounds. He will probably lose a little weight when he gets here for two-a-days but he really looked good. Darnell was the one fullback that we wanted. He was a good runner in high school and showed that he can be a good blocker as well. I think that he can be just like Dennis McKinley.
03/19/00 - While watching the initial spring practice yesterday, I noticed a couple of position changes from last season. Walk-on offensive lineman Jake Hambrick has been moved to tight end and senior offensive lineman Michael Fair is now the starting center.
Spring practice comments by Coach Sherrill:
Coach Sherrill: The first day we came out with head gears and no pads. We are a lot more athletic than we were at this time. I certainly think that we will be improved in the receiving corps. And, hopefully, the young and new offensive linemen will mesh together to help give us a good offensive team.
GS: I noticed that you moved walk-on offensive lineman Jake Hambrick to tight end?
Coach Sherrill: He came here as a tight end and we moved him to offensive line last fall but tight end is where he is going to play.
03/16/00 - Click here to see the initial spring football depth chart.....
03/15/00 - Kendall Roberson 6th year eligibility update:
As of yesterday, Kendall Roberson and MSU are still waiting to hear from the NCAA as to whether Kendall will receive his 6th year of eligibility.
03/10/00 - Thanks to one of you for info on another near Football/Basketball/Baseball sweep by MSU over Ole Miss in the 1993/1994 season. MSU won the football game, both men's basketball games and five of six baseball games. The one baseball loss was by one run. Two of the baseball victories were at the SEC Baseball Tournament held in Oxford, MS.
03/08/00 - Congrats go out to MSU football signee Robert Spivey (Clarksdale HS) who, according to a source of mine, has made the honor roll for the just completed nine weeks period.
03/08/00 - Here are several articles about Ingle Martin, the Montgomery Bell Academy (Nashville, TN.) quarterback that I mentioned a few days ago.
MBA's Martin an all around athlete.....
All-Midstate Football/Division 2 Offensive Player of the Year......
All-Midstate Offense Dream Team.....
Strongest throwing arms......
03/07/00 (Premium site exclusive) - Just thought I would expand on the Iron Dawg article in the Sunday edition of The Clarion-Ledger.
Here is a list of the 15 MSU football players who bench pressed 400 or more pounds during the Iron Dawg competition:
03/06/00 - I thought you guys would enjoy reading an excerpt from a premium site interview that I did with MSU assistant football coach Melvin Smith.
How about talking about the high school players that MSU signed?
Coach Smith: Gabe Wallace is an athletic kid from Greenwood High School in the Delta. Gabe did a lot of different things in high school. He played wide out, defensive back, and played basketball. I really think that he has all of the qualities that make you think that he is going to be a really good college defensive back. The first thing we will do is see if he can cover receivers consistently. I'm not talking about covering receivers every now and then, because Coach Dunn might decide he wants to blitz every down. If he decides he wants to do that, then we have to have guys who can cover all the time. I think that Gabe Wallace has all of the tangible measurements that you look for in a DB. He is tall, athletic, fast, extremely competitive and a real good student. He was Mr. Greenwood High School. He has a 99% chance of qualifying. I really think Gabe is special.
According to Coach Wilson, Gabe is what he called a hidden talent. It appears to me that he was overlooked by a lot of schools. Could you talk about that?
Coach Smith: He wasn't overlooked by the people who really knew something about him. The truly professionals study. Southern Miss knew about him because they had him in camp. It is kind of like Sherrod Gideon and Todd Pinckston. Nobody recruited them but Southern Miss. They knew about Gabe. I think that he is a guy that was left out of a lot of publications. But that is the reason that you go out and evaluate. The thing about a guy like Gabe, nobody really knows about a kid like that but the high school coaches in that area. The Mississippi coaches knew about him because they picked him for the Mississippi/Alabama all-star football game. They knew.
If you ever get the chance to watch Greenwood High School play basketball, then you ought to go watch him play. My wife saw Greenwood HS play Starkville HS and she saw why we wanted him. He held Rod Prather, the Dandy Dozen player who plays for Starkville High School, to three points at the half. And Gabe scored 20 points and he's not a basketball player. Gabe has the same type attitude about him that Smoot and Cooper have. He is also that kind of athlete. I'm really excited about his potential.
The last defensive back that we signed was Magee High School's Slovakia Griffith. How about talking about him? He is another one of those hidden talents that Coach Wilson talked about.
Coach Smith: Slovakia is another kid who comes from really good bloodlines. I know his dad and his dad was a great athlete. His mother is an athletic person. I feel like he is going to be a good defensive back for us. Obviously, we think that he can play cornerback. There is a reason why Magee High School didn't give up a lot of points this year. They had two pretty solid corners and Slovakia was one of them. He is a good enough student who is well-behaved and easy to be around kid and that is extremely competitive. I think that he will qualify. He is tall for a cornerback. He is almost 6-0 tall.
Coach Smith talked a little about evaluating talent at the end of our conversation. Here are his comments.
I think that we do a pretty good job of evaluating talent. If you noticed, we have gradually gotten better on defense the longer that we have been together as a staff. The first year, when we were 5 and 6, we made progress from the beginning of the year to the end. We don't always get the guys that are big-named guys. Kendall Roberson wasn't a big-named guy. I don't think that Tim Nelson was a highly recruited guy. Izell McGill wasn't a highly recruited guy. I don't think that you judge DBs that way because high school DBs are hard to evaluate. That is why some schools don't have any. There are a lot of schools with a lot more resources than Mississippi State who don't have DBs who are very efficient. I don't know of anybody who signed any better high school defensive backs than we did.
Plus, I really like our junior college guys. I don't think that you can make a mistake signing a junior college guy because you get to see what they can do in college for two years. Coach Dunn and I were looking at a film of a defense that he had at Mississippi in 1992. That team won 9 football games and had a lot of junior college guys on its defense. Chad Brown came from junior college. Ernest Fluer came from junior college. Cassius Ware came from junior college. Dwayne Dotson was a Tennessee transfer. Len Ross was a junior college guy. Tony Collier, the free safety, was a junior college guy. Abdul Ross was a guy who he got off the scout team. Johnny Dixon was just an average football player who played Dog Safety. Michael Lowery was the last guy signed who nobody recruited but Delta State. He is still playing with Chicago. Nate Wayne was put on the recruiting board two days before signing day. No one recruited him. It was made up a lot of junior college guys, a transfer and a few guys no one else recruited.
03/05/00 (12:30 p.m.) - If you haven't done so, please read the latest Clarion-Ledger article from Sekou Smith. I believe you will find it very interesting. It will also definitely give next year's opponents something to think about over the summer.
03/05/00 - I think that you will find this piece of info very interesting.
Taylorsville HS has several players who have good enough speed to get colleges very, very interested in them:
Senior-to-be Chris Keyes - 4.45 in the forty. Chris has played WR, CB, RB and KR.
Junior-to-be Timmy Ducksworth - 4.71 in the forty. What is very impressive about this time is Timmy is a lineman (DL/OL) who weighs 290 pounds.
Sophomore-to-be Heath Robinson - Ran a 4.65 forty. Jason plays TE/DE.
Junior-to-be Jason Johnson - Ran a 4.41 forty. Plays WR, DB, KR.
Taylorsville HS also has a player with the last name Haynes who ran a hand-timed 4.32 forty. Not sure what his first name is.
03/04/00 - The rumor is MSU is interested in Montgomery Bell Academy quarterback Ingle Martin (6-4, 205, 4.62 speed). For those of you who would like to see what Ingle looks like, here is a picture of him. Scroll down to the bottle of the page. Be prepared, it downloads very slow because of all the images on the page.
Also look for MSU to recruit another out of state quarterback; Spencer Pennington (6-4, 190) of Fayette, Alabama.
03/03/00 - According to my sources, Houston High School's outstanding linebacker/running back Matt Childs has been invited to walk-on at State this coming fall.
Matt is 6-0 and weighs a little over 200 pounds. He was selected Most Valuable Player in 2-3A and made 3A All-State as well. Matt will be a busy young man this summer considering he will be playing in the Mississippi All-Star game and will be heading to Australia for three weeks to play for the Mississippi team. Matt, who has a perfect 4.0 grade point average and a 27 on his act, will be majoring in Mechanical Engineering at MSU this fall.
03/03/00 - Here are names and info on a few Ripley HS players that MSU may be looking at. All are seniors-to-be:
Additional info on Brandon from my source:
03/02/00 - I happened to see MSU cornerback Fred Smoot while in the football office yesterday. Fred told me he is now bench pressing 285 pounds and squatting over 400 pounds.
I also saw offensive lineman Kevin Sijansky at yesterday's baseball game. Kevin told me he has a slight upper body injury which should be fine prior to spring practice. Prior to the injury, he was benching 465 pounds and he also said he can squat over 600 pounds. He mentioned that he will be playing center, which is his favorite position, this spring.
03/02/00 - Do any of you know anything about Ingle Martin, a quarterback from Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, TN.? If you do, please email me.
03/01/00 - I visited with Coach Fremin Monday morning (Feb. 28th) to talk about the signees that he will be coaching next season. Coach Fremin is MSU's offensive line coach. Here is an excerpt from the premium site interview.
GS: Mississippi State signed a couple of high school players. How about talking about Will Rogers first?
Coach Fremin: We liked Will when we saw him play on defense on tape. He could probably play defense for us. Coach Tompkins asked the high school coach if he would play him on offense so that we could see him play offense. The high school coach did that for us every game. Because of that, he helped get the kid a scholarship because that kid is going to be a really good offensive lineman. He has great feet, good explosion, good size - he is about 295 pounds - and he has only played football for a couple of years.
GS: Do you feel his potential is as good as I have heard it is?
Coach Fremin: Yes, because he looked like a very good offensive lineman in high school and hasn't played that position very much. Plus, he is a very aggressive player.
GS: The last lineman is David Stewart, who is from Alabama. Talk about him?
Coach Fremin: David is another defensive lineman who played offense some during high school. He played defense most of the time and he showed that he could really run. He is a big, tall, 6-7 kid who can really run. I watched him on a tape from the spring. I wrote on the tape that I really liked number 53 -- I believe that was his number -- and gave it back to David Wilson, the coach who was recruiting him. South Carolina, Auburn, Ole Miss and Mississippi State were all in the picture with him. Because we got on him early, we were able to sign him. I think that he is going to be a great player. He certainly fits our mold because he is huge. He needs to work on his strength, but he already has the feet, the speed, the size and the range that you look for in an offensive lineman.
