It's still football season, right?

As the MSU football teams preps for their visit to Jacksonville, FL for the 2011 Gator Bowl, the basketball team is already seven games into their season.

The Basketball Dawgs are now sitting at 5-2 after the first seven games. There are a couple of bad losses to Florida Atlantic and East Tennessee State that are going to hurt the Bulldog's chances come tournament time, so the Dawgs are hoping to find some production from their role-players until the duo of Dee Bost and Renardo Sidney return to the hardwood.

Dee Bost missed the NBA Draft withdrawal deadline by approximately 24 hours, causing the NCAA to suspend him for nine games. Renardo Sidney was the much maligned transfer student who was accused (but never proven) to receive improper benefits and the NCAA SUSPECTS that he lied, so he sat out an entire season plus sitting a third of this season as well. And for those of you keeping track, Cam Newton's dad asked for $200,000 for his son to play football at Auburn "without his knowledge"* which resulted in him being suspended between the hours of 9 pm and 9 am for one day, I guess, if he, sorta, you know, felt like being suspended, or whatever....

* - UTTER. BULLSHIT.

Anyway, the NCAA in it's infinite wisdom makes these decisions on a case-by-case basis, and CLEARLY it's always with the student-athlete's best interests at heart, but I digress.

The Basketball Dawgs are in the midst of a 5-games-in-5-days stretch. Having dropped the first of the five to East Tennessee St. the Bulldogs rebounded (get it? a little basketball humor for you there) with 2 straight wins over North Carolina A&T and a scrappy Nicholls State team that beat SEC West foe LSU on their home court earlier this season.

Conventional wisdom dictates that SEC teams shouldn't lose to "lesser foes" like Florida Atlantic, but it seems every season Rick Stansbury and the Basketball Bulldogs leave fans scratching their heads at the odd loss here or there. Hopefully when the Dynamic Duo of Bost and Sidney return (which one should be Batman, anyway?) the offensive production will pick up, and the outlook will become more palatable. For now, we have to look to players like Rayvern Johnson and Kodi Augustus to step in and produce until we get our full lineup back. Hang in there, Dawgs... January will be here before you know it.