HottyToddy.com’s Daily Ole Miss Sports Roundup

HottyToddy.com is giving readers a roundup of all the commentary and information about the Ole Miss Rebels from various publications around the Web.

Readers will be able to check out the latest information in a single post every day throughout the year. Here at HottyToddy.com, we are doing all the leg work to find the information that people may want to hear about Ole Miss sports.

Today’s roundup features OMSpirit, Saturday Down South and OleMiss.247Sports.com.

DL Coach Chris Kiffin likes spring progress of his talented group

Spring Practice 2016 Football
Photo by Joshua McCoy/Ole Miss Athletics
@olemisspix

You’d think Rebel DL Coach Chris Kiffin would be bemoaning – at least a little bit – losing players the caliber of Robert Nkemdiche, Channing Ward and Woodrow Hamilton, but, on the contrary, he says he and the Ole Miss football staff have planned for this day and recruited accordingly.

“We are doing good things this spring,” said Kiffin. “I like our main guys, I like our backups. We were able to redshirt some guys and let them grow up some before throwing them in there and now I believe they are ready, or at least they will be by fall. Victor Evans, Ross Donnelly, Austrian Robinson and Garrald McDowell are all in their second or third years now and it’s time.

“As for our frontline guys, we have Breeland )Speaks) and D.J. (Jones) at the tackles, and they are having great springs and Marquis (Haynes) and John (Youngblood) at the ends and they are also doing real well. We are missing DE Fadol Brown and DT Isasac Gross, who we will count on in the fall. Overall, I am very pleased with where we are in spring ball.”

Kiffin has always played at least eight players in his four spots, rotating liberally. Will he still be able to do that?

“I believe you have to play at least eight and I believe we will have eight ready to go,” he stated. “Now, we may not give the backups as many reps as they got last year, or we may give them more, it all depends on their production, but, yes, we will play at least eight guys in 2016. We have to have four tackles and four ends and we have that with the early addition of freshman Benito Jones.”

Courtesy of Chuck Rounsaville and OMSpirit.com

FSU, which opens 2016 against Ole Miss, loses star player for ‘several months’

HottyToddy.com file photo

The game between Ole Miss and Florida State is one of the SEC’s most anticipated nonconference matchups to open the 2016 season.

That matchup received a huge piece of injury news on Wednesday, as the Seminoles revealed that star RB Dalvin Cook will be out for several months following shoulder surgery.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that Cook is expected to be sidelined until July, which would still presumably give him ample time to prepare for the Sept. 5 neutral-site matchup in Orlando.

Resuming activities and being at 100-percent are two completely different things, so it will certainly be a situation that Rebels fans will want to monitor as the summer rolls around.

Cook obviously will miss the rest of Florida State’s spring drills.

Courtesy of Nick Cole and Saturday Down South

Spring buzz on SEC West early enrollees

Spring Practice 2016 Football
Photo by Joshua McCoy/Ole Miss Athletics
@olemisspix

Every year, when spring semester rolls around, a group of high school seniors make a mature decision. They decided to skip out on things like senior prom, graduation and, everyone’s favorite, senior cut days, and instead get their high school diplomas early in order to join their new football programs a semester early.

The SEC West saw a solid group of early enrollees get to campus this spring. Who is making practice headlines, and how are they doing? We’ll take a spin through the division to check in on the true freshmen already on campus, leaving the junior college transfers out.

OLE MISS

Starting quarterback Chad Kelly will miss the rest of spring practice with a sports hernia surgery and it should give five-star freshman quarterback Shea Patterson an opportunity to take some reps with the first team in the final practices of the spring.

Patterson has been splitting second-team reps with redshirt freshman quarterback Jason Pellerin for most of the spring. Kelly is expected to be fully recovered by the end of the month.

As for the defense Rebels defensive coordinator Dave Wommack said he was as “proud as I can be” in regards to the contributions of five-star defensive tackle Benito Jones. Wommack said Jones will definitely help the unit next season.

Courtesy of Corey Long and Saturday Down South

So What is a Sports Hernia?

Ole Miss QB Chad Kelly Photo by Josh Bonner

Ole Miss quarterback Chad Kelly has undegone a procedure to repair what has been called a sports hernia injury and will miss the remainder of spring practice. We’re not doctors and don’t claim to be, but we decided to explore the definition and prognosis of the injury suffered by Kelly, who is the vital ingredient in Ole Miss’ plans to top what the Rebels accomplished on the field last season with 10 victories, a top 10 finish and a Sugar Bowl championship.

Kelly is set to return this fall as the SEC’s most accomplished quarterback. He completed 298 of 458 passes for 4,042 yards and 31 touchdowns last seaosn, while rushing for 500 yards and 10 TDs.

By all accounts, Kelly should be fully recovered from the injury in a matter of weeks and there is almost no concern of any lingering effects. In short order, Ole Miss’ Heisman hopeful should be just fine.

We turned to the world-renowned Andrews Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center in Birmingham, Ala., to explore the definition and prognosis of a sports hernia injury. Of course, all injuries and subsequent recoveries are different, but the following provides a general scope of the injury.

What is a Sports Hernia? 

Sports Hernia as actually a misnomer. The more appropriate term is “athletic pubalgia”. It represents a biomechanical imbalance between the adductor musculature (groin muscle) and the lower abdominal musculature (lower abs). Generally, a groin pull is the inciting event, then due to the muscular imbalance from compensation the rectus begins to pull off of the pelvis. There is no true hernia, simply a muscle-tendon failure. It often presents in a sporting athlete with symptoms that mimic a hernia, however no true “hernia” exists.

Courtesy of David Johnson and OleMiss.247Sports.com

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