| Friday, April 24, 2015 |
| 'Grand Bullyvard' plan gets funding from state | |
 | Starkville will soon take the first steps toward a project that could transform the Highway 12 corridor between Spring and Russell streets. Gov. Phil Bryant signed the Legislature's Fiscal Year 2016 budget allocation for road projects Monday, which included a provision allocating $750,000 for planning and pre-construction activities associated with a long-dormant project known as the Grand Bullyvard. A 2011 planning exercise developed the idea of redesigning the Highway 12 corridor linking Starkville and Mississippi State University to an urban thoroughfare that increases economic development potential and provides better access points. "I share Mayor Wiseman's excitement about the benefits this forward-thinking initiative could bring to MSU and to the city. I commend the mayor for his vision and determined efforts to work with our legislative delegation to advance the project," said MSU President Mark Keenum in a release. "Combined with the Mill at MSU, the Grand Bullyvard will offer a very appealing gateway to our campus and to the city." |
| Makeover coming to Highway 12 near Mississippi State | |
 | Highway 12 near Mississippi State University is about to get a makeover. Starkville Mayor Parker Wiseman says the Mississippi Legislature recently provided funding for the Grand Bullyvard Project. The plan calls for work to provide more access for pedestrians and bicyclists along the roadway. The roadway separates the MSU campus from retail development along College View Drive and Russell Street. |
| Mississippi State paper selects first African American editor-in-chief | |
| The new editor-in-chief of Mississippi State University's student newspaper is making history. The university says Lacretia R. Wimbley is The Reflector's first African American editor-in-chief. Wimbley, a Jackson junior communication/journalism major, began writing for the paper in the fall of 2013 and became news editor the following spring. She has received many honors for her work, including first place for best news writing and third place in best front page design at the Mississippi Press Association's 2014-15 Better Newspaper Contest student competition. |
| Martin Gets MSU Extension Post | |
 | The Mississippi State University Extension Service has appointed Steve Martin as its interim associate director for agriculture and natural resources. Since 2012, Martin has served as the head of the North Mississippi Research and Extension Center in Verona, where he administers research programs at four branch experiment stations: Northeast Mississippi in Verona, North Mississippi in Holly Springs, Pontotoc Ridge-Flatwoods in Pontotoc and Prairie in Prairie. Martin will continue his existing responsibilities while filling the vacancy left by the retirement of Joe Street. |
| Research grant to target pests, disease | |
| A research grant has been awarded to Mississippi State as part of a USDA project to boost food security. The grant will look at minimizing livestock losses due to insects or disease. The research will look to improve prevention, early detection, diagnosis and recovery from new, foreign or emerging diseases of pests. Mississippi State University is receiving $47,464 to create a portable computer and communication center. The center will be used to train students, veterinarians, and other food production stakeholders how to use models and software to protect livestock from pests and disease. |
| Mississippi State Engineering Students Showcase Semester's Work | |
| It's not unusual to see lights on at Mississippi State's engineering building at all hours of the night. On Thursday, computer and electrical engineering majors got to show of the results of those late night labors. Sixteen senior design projects went on display to the public. Six student teams showcased everything from a traffic sensor to detect blind spots to safer crosswalks to ways to track bicycle activity. |
| Mississippi State Showcases Student Art Exhibit | |
| A free art exhibit is now on display at Mississippi State University. Three university galleries are filled with the works of more than a dozen graduating fine art students. The "Bachelor of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition: TANGENT" showcases the work from the students final year of art studies. The MSU art department is Mississippi's largest undergraduate studio art program. |
| Mississippi State student from Columbus wins percussion competition | |
| A Mississippi State junior from Columbus is this year's winner in the upper division of the Mississippi Percussive Arts Society's solo percussion competition. Trenton N. Brown is a music education major specializing in percussion instruments including snare drum, keyboard percussion, timpani, drum set, multiple percussion and marching percussion. He also is a member of the MSU Percussion Ensemble. The non-profit society works to promote percussion pedagogy and performance. Jason Baker, MSU associate music professor currently, is president of the Magnolia State chapter. |
| Britt: Oktibbeha County likely to turn dirt on shelter next year | |
| Oktibbeha County has secured federal grant funding for a $4.2 million storm shelter that is expected to house about 3,500 people during short-term storms, Emergency Management Director Jim Britt confirmed Wednesday. Work on the project, a roughly 20,000-square-foot facility that will locate on county-owned land near the intersection of Industrial Park Road and Lynn Lane, should begin next year. Supervisors approved the building's basic design and authorized the architect to move forward this week. The county has until December to receive final approval from federal and state emergency agencies before turning dirt. |
| Higgins: Land key to LINK success | |
| The secret to Lowndes County's industrial success, according to Golden Triangle Development LINK Executive Director Joe Max Higgins, is years of investing in industrial land. Over the last decade, he said, Lowndes County has invested $65 million of its own tax revenue to help build Mississippi's top industrial tax base. Now, Higgins said the LINK hopes to use the Lowndes model in Clay and Oktibbeha counties to make the Golden Triangle a regional industrial hub. The importance of a strong industrial property base featured prominently in Higgins' presentation to the LINK's advisory council -- comprised of civic and economic development organization leadership from the Golden Triangle -- on Wednesday at East Mississippi Community College's Mayhew campus. |
| Raybern Foods looks to fill 200 jobs quickly in Shannon | |
 | Raybern Foods is looking to fill 200 jobs as soon as possible at its newest production facility. The Hayword, California-based company announced in January it was transferring production of its deli sandwich line to the former Sara Lee building in the Tupelo Lee Industrial Park in Shannon. Company officials said Thursday that the hiring process has started. The facility is being renovated, and equipment will be moved into it next month. In addition to its own investment, Raybern is getting state and local help. The Mississippi Development Authority is providing up to $2 million, including $1.75 million to building improvements and relocation costs; $200,000 from local governments for infrastructure work and $50,000 for workforce training. |
| State benefits from Natchez Trace Parkway visitors | |
| Roughly 80 percent of the $136 million spent in communities near the Natchez Trace Parkway was done in Mississippi, a National Park Service report revealed. Last year, the NTP had 5,846,473 visitors. the National Park Service reported. In addition to the money spent along the 444-mile parkway, the economic impact also generated 1,843 jobs in the local area. The NPS calculates 13 percent of spending was in Tennessee and the remaining 7 percent was in Alabama. The National Park Service's visitor spending analysis showed $15.7 billion of direct spending by 292.8 million park visitors in communities within 60 miles of a national park. |
| Local developers bemoan loss of MDA regional offices | |
 | The Mississippi Development Authority confirmed Wednesday it will close all eight of its regional offices, including its East Central office in Meridian. "I'm not excited at all about it" closing, said Gerald Mills, executive director of the Winston County Economic Development District Partnership. "We've always gotten great service. They're a great network and they serve to promote our regional alliance, the East Mississippi Economic Development Council. They've kept those efforts alive." Winston is one of 13 counties the East Central office services, concentrating on retaining and expanding existing business and industry. How the closure will affect the day-to-day activities of Mills' operation is unclear, he said, but there will be a void where there once was stability. |
| Bryant vetoes school standards bill | |
| Legislation that would establish a commission to make recommendations to the state Board of Education on academic standards was vetoed Thursday by Gov. Phil Bryant. Advocates for the legislation, including Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves -- who immediately criticized the veto -- said the bill was passed to curb the controversial Common Core academic standards adopted by the nine-member state Board of Education. But Bryant said the legislation did not go far enough. "I remain firmly committed to ending Common Core in Mississippi," Bryant said in a statement. "This bill does not accomplish that goal, and I cannot in good conscience sign it into law." Reeves responded that Bryant's veto "ensures that Common Core will remain in Mississippi schools." |
| Bryant vetoes Common Core bill; Reeves criticizes move | |
| Gov. Phil Bryant on Thursday vetoed an "anti-Common Core" bill passed by the Legislature, saying it doesn't guarantee the national education standards won't be used in Mississippi schools. "I remain firmly committed to ending Common Core in Mississippi," Republican Bryant said in a statement on Thursday. "This bill does not accomplish that goal, and I cannot in good conscience sign it into law." His veto was applauded by tea party and other Common Core opponents, but panned by fellow Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves. Reeves had championed Senate bill 2161, which was approved by 93 of 99 Republicans in the Legislature (with three absent and not voting). |
| Transparency issue causes Bryant to veto Mississippi Coast Coliseum bill | |
 | Gov. Phil Bryant on Thursday vetoed four bills, including one that would have given Coast officials more control over the Coast Coliseum and Convention Center. That bill, though, was vetoed not because of the shift of control but because of a transparency issue, supporters said. It would have ended a requirement that information regarding contracts be published in a local newspaper. State Rep. Scott DeLano, R-Biloxi, a supporter of the bill in the House, said the intent was to streamline the process, not hide anything. He said lawmakers thought the Harrison County Board of Supervisors would provide that notification and it would be duplication for the Coliseum Commission to also do it. |
| 'Going for the jugular:' County Engineer Warnock to sue Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins-Butler | |
| Madison County Engineer Rudy Warnock has retained counsel and plans to sue Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins-Butler for allegations made during the mayor's state of the city address Thursday night. "I have been accused of being corrupt by her for many, many years," Warnock said Friday. "If there is something that I'm doing that is corrupt, please show me." During her address, Butler compared Warnock to former Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps. Epps was indicted on federal corruption charges late last year. Warnock said he plans to "go for the jugular" when suing Butler. |
| Loretta Lynch confirmed by Senate as attorney general | |
 | Loretta E. Lynch's long wait to become U.S. attorney general ended Thursday, with the Senate voting 56 to 43 to confirm the veteran New York prosecutor five months after President Obama submitted her nomination to Congress. Lynch is the first African American woman to be nominated for the post, which has taken on a higher-than-usual profile in the Obama administration because of the leading role the Justice Department has recently played in the debate over race and policing across the country. For Lynch, the time between nomination and confirmation was the longest for an attorney general nominee in 31 years. In the end, the confirmation vote margin was wider than expected: Ten Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), joined the Senate's 44 Democrats and two independents in supporting Lynch. |
| As Governors Eye The White House, Home Takes A Back Seat | |
 | The list of official and likely candidates for president in 2016 includes some prominent Republicans who are currently governors. It's all part of the "getting to know you" phase of an early presidential campaign. And for a sitting governor, it's a time to tell the world -- especially voters in New Hampshire and Iowa -- just what you've accomplished back home. Three of them -- Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Bobby Jindal -- all tout executive experience as qualification for the White House. They also share something else -- slumping poll numbers back home. They've been working to make themselves familiar and friendly faces to the party faithful in early voting states, including at a big event hosted last week by the New Hampshire GOP. |
| Paleo Diet In and Pizza Out, a Slimmer Jeb Bush Seems Intent on Staying That Way | |
 | Steak Tips Susanne, the $21 entree at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester, N.H., arrived as a carefully composed plate: strips of sirloin, sauteed peppers and caramelized onions atop a bed of linguine with a side of garlic bread. Then the dish underwent the Jeb Bush treatment. The garlic bread was instantly banished to the plate of a nearby aide. The pasta was conspicuously pushed aside. A sympathetic guest at the table, convinced that Mr. Bush, 62, could not possibly be sated, offered him a piece of her salmon. Was it true, the guest asked him, that a stomach shrinks during a diet, easing the pangs of hunger? Not at all, Mr. Bush replied. "I am always hungry," he said. Jeb Bush is thinking of running for president. And he is starving. |
| MUW students share cultures from around the globe | |
| Wednesday night, Rent Auditorium at Mississippi University for Women filled with students in colorful saris and glittering jewelry as students on stage sang and danced to tunes from all over the world. It was International Student Association Night at the university. Students in the association put together a performance presenting traditional songs, dances and fashion from cultures across the globe. Begun as a small event held in Hogarth Student Union 10 years ago, ISA Night has blossomed into a yearly event with growing numbers of audience and participants every year, according to a MUW news release. |
| Once Cash Cows, University Hospitals Now Source of Worry for Schools | |
 | Teaching hospitals have long been points of pride for major universities, and in recent years revenue from medical services has served as a lifeline for some schools that have struggled with falling state aid and pressure to slow tuition increases. Now the marriages between universities and their cash-cow clinical operations are starting to fray as changes stemming from the 2010 health-care law threaten to make university hospitals less profitable. "Every time the environment becomes unstable, universities that own their systems are trying to sell them and universities that don't are trying to buy them," said Daniel Jones, chancellor at the University of Mississippi, a state school. "Everybody's unhappy with their circumstances." Disagreements over how to run the hospital system led Mississippi's higher-education board not to renew Mr. Jones's contract last month; his term will end in September. |
| Internationalizing UM: executive director of global engagement begins to build partnerships | |
 | From Africa to Canada to the United States, Nosa Egiebor has made his mark on college campuses. Now, his job is to connect the University of Mississippi with the rest of the world. Egiebor was hired last summer as the University of Mississippi's first chief international officer and executive director of global engagement. The office of global engagement is essentially being built "from scratch," Egiebor said. "It is a new office that is charged with the responsibility of leading the comprehensive internationalization of the University of Mississippi," Egiebor said. "I have offices and departments that are coming from different parts of the university brought together under the office of global engagement. I have to find a way to get all of that unit to work together smoothly." |
| Donation to Southern Foodways Alliance starts new program | |
| Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi was the recipient of a major donation that will be used to create a new program. SFA members Pam and Brook Smith of Louisville, Kentucky gave the $250,000 gift to start the Smith Symposium Fellows program, helping individuals doing notable work in their careers be able to participate in the symposia of the SFA. SFA says the first class of Smith Symposium Fellows were selected for their potential to transform the region and its foodways. |
| Gun on Copiah-Lincoln Community College campus causes scare | |
 | A man was arrested on Copiah-Lincoln Community College's campus for possession of a weapon on school property Friday morning. Natalie Davis, Co-Lin's director of public information, said no one was threatened. The campus was not on lockdown, and nobody was in danger. Davis said the Co-Lin police department was immediately contacted and the male suspect was apprehended and transported to the Copiah County jail. |
| Historical figures come alive during tour at U. of Alabama | |
 | The University of Alabama's first Living History Festival will give visitors the opportunity to "meet" several important figures in the history of the state and the university on Saturday during afternoon tours on campus. Tours will run every 30 minutes from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is $4, and tickets can be purchased Saturday at Smith Hall. The tour begins at Smith Hall, where participants will meet actors portraying Eugene Allen Smith, the hall's namesake and a former UA professor and state geologist. |
| LSU drafting 'academic bankruptcy' plan in response to state budget crisis | |
 | LSU and many other public colleges in Louisiana might be forced to file for financial exigency, essentially academic bankruptcy, if state higher education funding doesn't soon take a turn for the better. Louisiana's flagship university began putting together the paperwork for declaring financial exigency this week when the Legislature appeared to make little progress on finding a state budget solution, according to F. King Alexander, president and chancellor of LSU. "We don't say that to scare people," he said. "Basically, it is how we are going to survive." |
| LSU, bracing for budget cuts, will reduce faculty hires by 50 percent | |
| LSU, anticipating significant budget cuts from the state, is scaling back on the hiring of new faculty. "We're going ahead with our course offerings but we have scaled back hiring," LSU President F. King Alexander, also chancellor at the Baton Rouge campus, said. The university had planned on hiring 125 new faculty members, a majority of which are replacements due to retirements and open vacancies, but Alexander said that figure will be scaled back by some 50 percent. Instead, LSU will look to hire 60 new faculty members. Louisiana's higher education institutions are facing $600 million in state budget cuts next school year, which would eliminate more than 80 percent of their total state financing. |
| U. of Florida frat insulted wounded war vets, group says | |
 | A University of Florida fraternity is under investigation after being accused of disrespecting a group of disabled military veterans by spitting on them and stealing their flags at a Panama City Beach resort last weekend. University of Florida President Kent Fuchs has personally apologized for the behavior of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity members toward the veterans participating in the Warrior Beach Retreat at Laketown Wharf Resort and promised a full investigation. This is not Zeta Beta Tau's first trouble this school year. The UF chapter has been on probation since last fall for a hazing incident. The fraternity has suspended operations at UF and is cooperating with the university during the investigation. |
| U. of Tennessee renovating 90-year-old industrial site | |
 | A former industrial site on Sutherland Avenue is getting new life as a University of Tennessee support services building. The $18.7 million adaptive-reuse project expands the university's footprint further north as it plans to relocate its Department of Facilities Services headquarters and other units from Volunteer Boulevard to a 91,000-square-foot building currently undergoing renovations. "It's a wonderful old building with great space. It needed some TLC, but we determined it was a great location," said David Irvin, associate vice chancellor for facilities services. The project is part of an unprecedented construction boom on campus, which includes more than $1 billion in new buildings and $70 million in renovations and deferred maintenance, Irvin said. |
| UGA researchers growing trees faster and easier to turn into fuel | |
 | Imagine a world where trees grew 50 percent larger. Imagine them growing faster, with bigger leaves and creating more shade, oxygen and places for birds to nest. Now, try to imagine the impact of that growth on the logging and biofuel industries. It may be less science-fiction than it sounds, as a team of researchers at the University of Georgia and the U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Science Center in Tennessee have surprising answers about the potential to manipulate the genetics in trees to work to our advantage. UGA biochemistry and molecular biology Professor Debra Mohnen and her colleagues found that by manipulating a certain gene in the tree commonly known as the eastern cottonwood, the structure of the plant cell walls are easier to break down, potentially overcoming a major obstacle to more affordable biofuel production. |
| Texas A&M vet school shows off facilities, animals and profession during annual open house | |
 | Prepared for whatever procedure is required, Kathryn LaQuaglia has performed everything from a brain transplant to a removing a foreign object -- out of teddy bears. As a third-year vet student, LaQuaglia will be coordinating the teddy bear surgery -- one of the busiest stops at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences Vet Open House, which is happening from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. "Depending on what the kid thinks is wrong or what they figure out is wrong, we'll do it all," LaQuaglia said. Now in its 22nd year, the Open House is one of the largest student-run A&M events, in which the public gets a chance to explore the university's vet school inside and out. The free event requires no registration and is for all ages. |
| Texas A&M architecture students given opportunity to design hospital to be built in Honduras | |
| More than 90,000 Hondurans are in dire need of a new hospital, and Texas A&M University architecture students lent their talents this semester to help make it a reality. Teams of students enrolled in architecture-for-health and environmental design studios created seven hospital designs, one of which will replace an overcrowded, outdated hospital on Roatan Island 35 miles off Honduras' northern coast. Students will show their proposals to hospital representatives, donors and Honduran government officials on Friday from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. Hospital Director Raymond Cherington said a new center cannot come soon enough. "This is the most important thing that could happen to us the next two years on the island," Cherington said. |
| U. of Missouri officials continue to work out kinks in alert system | |
 | After four potentially dangerous events on or near campus within a week, University of Missouri officials are still working on improving the school's alert system as issues with its use continue to garner criticism. Representatives from several departments, including police, facilities, communications and vice chancellors, met Wednesday to discuss how the MU Alert system was used in the latest event -- a bomb threat Tuesday night at the Student Center and Memorial Union -- and other recent incidents. Alerts have gone out through the system after a manhunt ended with police shooting a suspect on campus April 15, two women reported a robbery near the university on Sunday and Columbia police investigated a shots-fired call near campus Tuesday night shortly after the bomb threat was cleared. |
| Peer Review Works, Says New Research on Citations and Patents | |
 | The peer-review system is often described as the "gold standard" for determining scientific merit. A study published on Thursday gives that belief some empirical affirmation. The study shows that success rates of scientific projects, as measured by citations and patents, strongly correlate with the scores those projects were given under the peer-review process at the National Institutes of Health. The analysis, published in Science, covered more than 130,000 research projects financed by the NIH from 1980 to 2008. It found that a drop of one standard deviation in NIH peer-review scores is associated with 15 percent fewer citations, 7 percent fewer publications, 19 percent fewer "high impact" publications, and 14 percent fewer associated patents. The findings should serve as a warning about the risk of relying on less-costly alternatives to the process of gathering panels of scientists to personally assess the merit of research proposals, one author of the study said. |
| The Catch in Arizona State's Low-Cost Freshman Year Online: No Aid | |
| When leaders of Arizona State University announced their unusual effort to let students complete their entire freshman year online at a sharply discounted rate, they took pains to distance the project from previous MOOCs, or massive open online courses. Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State, stressed in an interview on Thursday that the university had until now avoided the MOOC trend. The project, he said, is something new, at one point calling its courses "curricular MOOCs" and at another using the term "super MOOC." Indeed, the challenge facing the new effort will be to do something that MOOCs have so far failed to achieve -- creating a lower-cost pathway to help more people complete college. And many observers see plenty of obstacles for Arizona State, chief among them that students using the approach will not be eligible for federal financial aid. |
| Just how much math, and what kind, is enough for life sciences majors? | |
 | For about as long as anyone can remember, most undergraduate natural science majors have been required to take at least two semesters of calculus. Lots of students -- especially those in the life sciences -- don't end up using most of what they've learned later on in their studies or their careers, but the requirement has endured. Math departments across the country are facing requests from life science colleagues to change the standard curriculum for non-math majors. Concerned scientists say they want their students to be studying more applicable math -- think equations about biological, ecological and evolutionary processes, many of which require computer programs to solve -- earlier in their careers. While some of those conversations have been easy and led to cross-disciplinary innovations, others have been more acrimonious. |
| BYOB: It's Brew Your Own Beer at some colleges | |
 | A bachelor's in beer? A master's in malt? Not quite. But these days some colleges are teaching students to make beer as part of their studies. When California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, fired up its gleaming new stainless steel brewery in December, it joined a small-but-growing number of colleges instructing students on how to produce high-quality craft beers. At the same time, it took the movement a step beyond -- kegging the results of their labors and selling it on campus. A pioneer in the process is the University of California, Davis, where students have been brewing beer since the makers of Lucky Lager built them a microbrewery in 1959. Like the other campuses, however, Davis doesn't sell beer and has no plans to. Charlie Bamforth, the university's Anheuser-Busch endowed professor of brewing science, believes getting into the retail end of things would be a distraction for him and his students. |
| Key to Vocabulary Gap Is Quality of Conversation, Not Dearth of Words | |
 | Thirty million words. For 20 years, a chasm of words has yawned between the children of college-educated professionals and those of high school dropouts, quantifying the academic disadvantage faced by the latter group long before they even start school. That statistic has led to a generation of vocabulary-centered interventions to close achievement gaps. The "30 million-word" gap is arguably the most famous but least significant part of a landmark study, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young Children, by the late University of Kansas child psychologists Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley. As the work turns 20 this year, new research and more advanced measuring techniques have cast new light on long-overshadowed, and more nuanced, findings about exactly how adult interactions with infants and young children shape their early language development. |
SPORTS
| Mississippi State baseball looks to snap slide on the road at Arkansas | |
| Mississippi State's baseball team has no choice now. If a season-saving turnaround is going to happen, it's going to have to happen on the road. That's where three of MSU's final four Southeastern Conference weekend series will be played, starting with a visit tonight to Arkansas (24-17, 9-9) to open a three-game set with the Razorbacks. At 22-19 overall and 6-12 in the SEC, MSU finds itself in need of a series win away from home. That's just fine with the Bulldogs. "We like going on the road," said MSU second baseman John Holland. |
| Bulldogs continue fight for postseason at Arkansas | |
| The remainder of Mississippi State's schedule will be an uphill climb if the Bulldogs are to make a postseason bid for a fifth consecutive season. MSU will play three of its final four SEC series on the road and its lone home series against top-ranked LSU. The Diamond Dogs are 22-19 overall and 6-12 in conference play, which ranks 13th in the league standings. Mississippi State travels to No. 25 Arkansas for a three-game set starting at 6:35 p.m. today. The series will continue Saturday at 6:05 p.m. and Sunday and 1:05 p.m. State must finish at least 12th to reach the SEC Tournament and needs a .500 or better overall record to qualify for an NCAA Tournament bid. |
| Mississippi State hopes open week helps with mental grind of season | |
| A month ago, it appeared a road trip to Arkansas would bring Mississippi State relief during its gauntlet of a schedule to close the season. Instead, the Razorbacks have won four straight Southeastern Conference series, including taking two of three from No. 1 Texas A&M last weekend. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs continue to trudge through the last two weeks having lost seven of eight games. "We have defended really well. At times we've pitched really well," MSU coach John Cohen said. "We need to put together some solid offensive ballgames to have a chance to win." |
| Four Mississippi State men's tennis players garner All-SEC awards | |
| Adding to an already impressive first season under head coach Matt Roberts, the 18th-ranked Mississippi State men's tennis team has landed four players on All-Southeastern Conference teams, the league announced Thursday. Leading State is sophomore Florian Lakat, who earned 2015 All-SEC First Team laurels. This comes a year after being named 2014 SEC Freshman of the Year and being placed on the All-SEC Second and Freshman Teams. Joining him is Rishab Agarwal, Mate Cutura and Juan Cruz Estevarena, who all landed on the 2015 All-SEC Second Team. Estevarena also earned 2015 All-SEC Freshman Team honors. MSU’s four All-SEC honorees and the remainder of the Bulldog squad now wait to hear their NCAA Team Championship destination. |
| Lawsuit against Nick Saban's daughter dismissed | |
| A Tuscaloosa judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the daughter of University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban, bringing an end to a legal fight between sorority sisters that began after a night of partying in Tuscaloosa. Attorneys for plaintiff Sarah Grimes and for Kristen Saban would not say whether there had been a settlement of the lawsuit, which was set for trial in early August. Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court Judge James Roberts dismissed the case just after 4 p.m. Thursday, ordering each party to pay their own legal costs. "We are pleased that this case is over," said Josh Hayes, a lawyer for the coach's daughter. |
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