Renardo Sidney cramps, has "a lot of fatigue" in his debut

Renardo Sidney officially began his career as a Mississippi State Bulldog last night.

Well, maybe not quite officially. You see, Sidney became eligible to play at the end of the first semester this season. Thanks to a bit of tricky scheduling by Rick Stansbury -- which included four games in four days, spanning Dec. 11th to Dec. 14th -- the Bulldogs have already played all nine of the games that Sidney was suspended for.

So he will be playing in Saturday's game against Virginia Tech in Puerto Rico.


But since Sidney has been at Mississippi State for a year and a half now without seeing a single second of action in a real, live game, Stansbury scheduled a scrimmage last night -- which, technically, would make it five games in five days -- against Belhaven.

The Bulldogs won 101-76.

More importantly, Sidney had 10 points and 6 boards in 15 minutes.

That doesn't mean he had a promising start to his college basketball career.

This quote from Rick Stansbury from Gary Parrish's blog is worrisome:

"Renardo had a lot of fatigue," Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury said after the Bulldogs' 101-76 win over Belhaven. "He will have to get in better shape if we are going to use him a lot."

As is this from the AP's write-up of the game:

By his own admission, Sidney is still out of shape. He's been doing P90X workout routines with coach Rick Stansbury over the past few weeks to try and shed some unwanted weight, but still tips the scales at about 275 pounds—10 pounds above his target weight.

Look, I don't want to rip the kid too much here. Sidney's always had weight issues, and going through what he went through and being forced to sit out for a year and a half is not exactly the best way for a kid with conditioning issues to stay in shape.

There is also a reason that people use the term "game-shape". As many wind sprints as you run, as much as you practice, playing in a real game is different. A game is going to be more physical and more emotionally and mentally taxing than any practice. I would have been shocked to see Sidney come in and look like the kid that was a top ten player in his high school class at one time.

Generally the problems you run into when you aren't in game shape is that your timing is off, the ball feels heavy on your jump shot, and you struggle to get your legs under you. Is that the issue here? From the Clarion Ledger:

"I was cramping real bad. It's just a poor game decision, of not hydrating real well. I've got to do better and hydrate and eat more bananas."

I'm not going to speculate on Sidney's condition.

I've done enough.

We'll all find out Saturday.