Mississippi State had just completed a flawless, 12-1 trouncing of Jackson State late Wednesday night when interim head coach Gary Henderson entered the Bulldogs’ traditional post-game huddle out in left field of Bob Braddy Stadium on the JSU campus.
Before Henderson could begin to talk, applause broke out. State players were clapping for their new head coach.
You don’t see that every day in college baseball.
But then you also don’t see such a stunningly peculiar start to a season as these State players have experienced this February.
“Tonight was big for our team,” Henderson later told reporters.
It was. The Diamond Dogs badly needed for something good to happen in this oddest of early seasons. State is opening the season with a 10-game road trip because of the reconstruction of Dudy Noble Field. The road trip began with the Bulldogs being “punched in the mouth,” Henderson said, three times by Southern Miss this past weekend. Then came the forced resignation of popular, second-year coach Andy Cannizaro, announced Tuesday morning.
Neither Henderson, nor his players, wanted to discuss Cannizaro’s departure, other than to call it “unfortunate.” Reports on what happened have centered on marital infidelity issues, but the guess here is reasons for his forced resignation are far more complicated.
The good news for State would appear that, in Henderson, State can turn in-house to an interim coach who has experienced head coaching success at the highest level of college baseball. Henderson, a former college pitcher, won 258 games and lost 199 as the head coach at Kentucky, where he succeeded Mississippi State athletic director John Cohen. In 2012, when Kentucky won 45 games, Henderson was named SEC Coach of the Year.
It was presumably an easy choice for Cohen to turn to Henderson, a highly respected pitching expert whom he has known and worked with for years.
In fact, Henderson said he and Cohen talked only briefly before the move was made for Henderson to replace Cannizaro. “I would term it a short conversation,” Henderson said. “It was pretty black and white what needed to happen. At least that would be my take.”
Henderson first met with the team as head coach on Wednesday morning. Then came the bus trip to Jackson and a 90-minute rain delay before Mississippi State became the first SEC team – or nationally ranked team – to play a game on the JSU campus.
The Bulldogs played well against a JSU team that opened its season the night before with a 4-0 victory over New Orleans at New Orleans. State pitched well, fielded well and hit well – and seemed focused and upbeat about it all.
Said Jake Mangum, the team’s centerfielder and clearly one of the team’s leaders, “”I trust Coach Henderson 100 percent. … I respect him so much.”
Mangum, nor Hunter Vansau (the other Bulldog player made available for post-game interviews), wanted to dwell on Cannizaro’s departure.
“It’s unfortunate, but we have to move on,” Mangum said. “I hate it, but we’ll be all right. We have a lot of baseball to play.”
Details of all the circumstances surrounding Cannizaro’s dismissal/resignation likely will surface over the coming days and weeks, but Mangum said he and his teammates will stay focused on the task at hand.
“We’re about to win a bunch of games,” he said.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.