Cannizaro’s construction nice for MSU
I often wondered last weekend what might possibly be going through Andy Cannizaro’s mind.
A whirlwind first season as a head coach at Mississippi State ended suddenly in a place where his college coaching experience first began – Alex Box Stadium. Cannizaro and his Bulldogs watched Sunday night as players he recruited, mentored and developed piled on top of each other in the middle of the field and the roar of the roughly 5,000 purple and gold-clad Cajuns that were left at 1:30 a.m. engulfed the young head man in the dug out.
It was the end of a long season filled with ups and downs but plenty of hope for the future. It was also the rekindling of a classic rivalry between Southeastern Conference schools from neighboring states and rabid fan bases that will have a little extra creole zest moving forward.
So what was Cannizaro thinking this suffocating night in Baton Rouge? As a man who doesn’t know the word “quit” he was probably thinking of every way imaginable to get back to this point in this series against this team. He was probably thinking he couldn’t wait for another opportunity to prove himself.
Cannizaro’s team spent the entire year being underestimated. At times in his career, he was the same way. There were two schools that stood out to Cannizaro in his recruitment: Tulane and Southern Miss. Home state LSU didn’t seem to have the interest and he made them pay in 2001 when his Green Wave team beat the mighty Tigers to go to Omaha.
His alma mater spurned Cannizaro from the head coaching job this past season only to see another door open several months later in the form of MSU. Call it fate, but both the Bulldogs and Cannizaro are now thankful things worked out the way they did.
The future in Starkville is wide open at this point for baseball. One of the great stages of college baseball being Dudy Noble Field is undergoing a major facelift and it’s only fitting that it comes at the beginning of a new era.
The new era is its larger than life, bench-pressing head coach that somehow found magic and a little duct tape to hold together a season that was destined to fail from the very beginning. Cannizaro entered already behind after arriving in the middle of fall ball with a roster that had been gutted by the MLB Draft and elbow injuries.
One by one the pitchers began to drop even into the season when Cannizaro and pitching coach Gary Henderson lost Ryan Rigby,
Graham Ashcraft, Blake Smith and Kale Breaux early in the year to go along with four other hurlers who were already out before the year began.
MSU navigated through the non-conference schedule fine enough but many believed things would worsen as the year wore on. It appeared that’s where it was heading when the Bulldogs went to Fayetteville and dropped all three games against Arkansas and followed that up with a midweek loss to Southern Miss.
One of the team’s top players in Jake Mangum was suspended for a game for a violation of team rules, pitcher Ryan Cyr was kicked off the team and catcher Elih Marrero would be suspended as well. It appeared everything was falling apart, but Cannizaro rallied the troops.
The Bulldogs got back-toback sweeps over Tennessee and on the road at Ole Miss. They beat top-10 Kentucky in a series, went on the road and took down South Carolina and swept Alabama. By the time State got to the last two weekends of the season, they held their own destiny with a chance to win the SEC outright for the second year in a row.
Things started to unravel down the stretch for MSU. The Bulldogs lost on the road at Georgia and were swept by LSU. With a chance for a semifinal appearance in the SEC Tournament, the bullpen blew up against Florida in the eighth inning losing a 3-0 lead.
It appeared the season would come to an end in Hattiesburg at the regional when South Alabama knocked off MSU right away in game one. Having to win four games the rest of the way was going to be impossible for what the Bulldogs had to work with. With this team, impossible wasn’t an option.
In two days, State beat all
three teams in the regional including a two-game sweep of Southern Miss on Monday night. The difference? Players like Cody Brown and Josh
Lovelady, who weren’t given much of a chance outside of MSU in recruiting. The ultimate glue players fit right into what Cannizaro wanted out of his team.
Cannizaro helped take Brent Rooker from a lateround pick as a sophomore to a first rounder in the draft. He helped take an offense that lost most of its fire power a season ago and made it the cornerstone of a team that struggled to piece it together on the mound.
As for that mound,
Henderson did a whale of a job considering the circumstances. In another act of pure fate, Henderson came to the fold with John Cohen
after ending his stint as head coach at Kentucky. Little did fans know how important his role would be in helping MSU find success through all of its issues.
So Cannizaro now waits for his next opportunity. He’s waiting for another chance to take the field with the maroon and white and continue to grow as a coach. He’ll do so next year with a full roster for the first time. He’ll have a full arsenal of pitchers to choose from and a budding group of players chomping at the bit to compete.
He won’t do so with this particular team. Many players will graduate and move on, others like Rooker will begin a career in pro baseball and others won’t make the cut when new players come in. None of that will diminish what this group meant to Cannizaro and the foundation he’s laid for the future.
As for the LSU Tigers and the rivalry that could be hitting its peak soon, that story is only just beginning.
Robbie Faulk is a sports writer for The Starkville Daily News. The opinions in this column are his and not necessarily the views of the SDN or its staff.