Mississippi's Big Three getting ready for basketball season

JACKSON, Miss. - Call it Midday Madness in Mississippi.

College basketball returns Saturday morning with the start of practice, but Mississippi's Big Three are starting without the glitzy late-night festivities favored by other schools across the country.

High-profile programs like Maryland, Kansas and Kentucky were expected to start practice precisely at 12:01 a.m. EDT amid hoopla and hysteria, but Mississippi, Mississippi State and Southern Miss will wait a few extra hours to begin no-frills workouts in near-empty gyms.

For the rebuilding Rebels, rejuvenated Golden Eagles and reloading Bulldogs, the preseason is all business.

"We're excited about getting on the floor (with the players) and seeing where we are at," Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury said Friday.

Mississippi State has less than four weeks to get ready for its first game that counts. The Bulldogs play Nov. 11 against Fairfield in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic in Birmingham, Ala., then meet Birmingham Southern or Alabama A&M the next day.

"We have to be more prepared to play early more than we ever were, because of the competition level," Stansbury said.

Expectations are high in Starkville after the Bulldogs return Southeastern Conference player of the year Lawrence Roberts and two other starters from a team that finished 26-4, was eighth in the final AP poll, won the SEC regular-season championship with a 14-2 mark and played in its third straight NCAA tournament.

Stansbury's main early practice goals are finding replacements for Timmy Bowers and Branden Vincent, and cultivating a hard edge because complacency is a luxury the Bulldogs can't afford.

"We've got to develop leadership and team toughness," Stansbury said. "We lost two tough men off of last year's team, so we've got to see where this team is from a toughness standpoint."

Larry Eustachy makes his return to the court Saturday afternoon when he conducts his first practice since his March hiring at Southern Miss.

The former Iowa State coach, out of a job last season after embarrassing photos were published showing him holding a beer can with a coed, will hold a coaching clinic before his first practice with the Golden Eagles, who were 13-15, went 6-10 in Conference USA last year, and play an exhibition against Belhaven on Nov. 6.

Rod Barnes is rebuilding at Ole Miss, which lost Justin Reed to the NBA and also graduated 3-point threat Aaron Harper. The Rebels went 13-15 and 5-11 in the SEC and are coming off their second straight losing season, and their leading returning scorer, Todd Abernethy, averaged less than six points per game last year.

But the preseason is the time for optimism and Barnes said earlier this week that he's still a believer.

"When you see this team, I think you'll go away saying 'These guys are a bit better than what I thought,'" he said.

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