Veteran MSU Hoops Tandem Named To SEC Winter Academic Honor Roll
STARKVILLE, Miss. - Mississippi State basketball veterans Piotr Stelmach and Billy Begley were named to the 2006-07 SEC Winter Academic Honor Roll, as announced Tuesday by SEC Commissioner Mike Slive. This season marks the fourth consecutive year that both players have collected academic honor roll status from the conference office.
A senior from Kamien Pomorski, Poland, Stelmach boasts a 3.39 cumulative grade point average and is target to graduate this year with a bachelor's degree in clinical exercise physiology. The two-time Dean's List Scholar also represented coach Rick Stansbury's SEC West Champion Bulldogs on the2006-07 SEC Men's Basketball Community Service Team.
Begley, a rising senior walk-on guard from Henderson, Ky., maintains a3.51 cumulative GPA in marketing with plans of pursuing his master's degree in business administration during the upcoming 2007-08 basketball campaign.The two-time Dean's List Scholar also served as a team co-captain for the21-14 Bulldogs for the second consecutive season in 2006-07.
In addition to achieving SEC Academic Honor Roll status for each of the past three seasons, both Stelmach and Begley also earned SEC Freshman Academic Honor Roll accolades as collegiate freshmen in 2003-04.
Along with leading all conference schools with a total of 20 SEC Academic Honor Roll recipients in men's basketball over the past five seasons, the Bulldogs are also tied for second in the league with 27 total academic honorees since Stansbury took over State's head coaching duties in 1998. Dating back to the 1998-99 campaign, two-time defending NCAA Champion Florida tops the list with a collective total of 32 honor roll recipients, followed by MSU and LSU with 27 total selections apiece.