STARKVILLE — What’s old is new again with Mississippi State’s opening opponent in Southeastern Conference play.
The style that the Razorbacks will implement tonight (8 p.m., Comcast Sports Southeast) will remind Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury of what he saw during his first trip to Fayetteville as a head coach 14 years ago.
Arkansas (11-3) has brought back the 94 feet of nonstop pressure defense that saw the Razorbacks make it to the national championship game in back-to-back seasons during their 1994-95 run. The program is now being run by a longtime assistant of those teams who has had major success as a head coach at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and Missouri. But Mike Anderson came home to revive a program that hasn’t seen the excitement of the mid-90s since his former boss Nolan Richardson’s departure.
“They press, they get after you,” Stansbury said. “In that place, those who have been in that place, you know that’s one of the most difficult places in the league to play. They’ve got a lot of different weapons, a lot of different guys that can dribble and pass it and shoot the basketball. They’re good around that block, but their strength is all those perimeter people they play.”
Stansbury is sure his team is much more prepared for Arkansas’s full-court press trap than in the past.
“I think we’re more equipped to handle full-court pressure than we were last year for sure,” Stansbury said. “We had one guy that could dribble the ball last year against it. We have other guys that you feel comfortable bringing up that basketball. When you got other options, it definitely makes you better.”
One of those options is senior point guard Dee Bost. A finalist for the 2012 Bob Cousy Award presented annually to the nation’s top point guard by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Bost will be asked to control the tempo against Arkansas’ pressure but will have help from fellow guards Brian Bryant, Rodney Hood, Jalen Steele and DeVille Smith.
“When you look at Dee Bost, he’s been a leader in assists, and he leads that basketball team,” Anderson said. “He has a stable of guards that are very good, but Bost is the one that leads that show.”
The issue for Anderson in his first season back in Arkansas is the lack of depth he needs to effectively run the high-energy system that got him to a national quarterfinal appearance with UAB and national semifinal appearance at Missouri. Like those other two stops, that success happened in years two and three of his time at those institutions.
Year one in Fayetteville has been a transition to getting the system down and evaluating which of his current roster can run the style of play effectively. Arkansas is playing with just nine scholarship players on its active roster.
“We’ve seen some progress in what we work on every day,” Anderson said. “I want us to pick up our pressure defense. That’s who we are and what we do.”
The key for No. 15 MSU (13-2) to come away with its third victory in its past four trips to Bud Walton Arena will be the controlling the size advantage they’ll have over the host Razorbacks. Bulldogs junior forward and leading scorer Arnett Moultrie (16.8 ppg, 11.4 rpg) will potentially match up with Arkansas’ inexperienced and outmanned frontcourt with the loss of Marshawn Powell for the rest of the season due to injury. MSU has also seen the improved offensive game of junior center Renardo Sidney as the former McDonald’s All-American is shooting more than 75 percent from the floor and has been nearly unstoppable when he’s caught the basketball near the low post block this month.
“We’ve got to keep Arnett off the offensive glass because those guys can play volleyball with it,” Anderson said. “Teams with size will sometimes have their best offense be to shoot it up there and have the big guys go get it.”
This is only the second true road game after MSU defeated the University of Detroit 80-75 in Motor City. Stansbury will have to look to his two key freshmen (Hood and Smith) to handle the hostile environment that is playing on the road in the Southeastern Conference.
“I already told Hood that it’s going to be a different type of environment,” Bost said. “It’s one of the loudest arenas I’ve played in, and when they make a run, it’ll be loud. You have to maintain your composure.”
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