Hogue, Sneed, Butler Earn Academic All-District Honors
STARKVILLE, Miss. - A trio of Mississippi State baseball players have been named to the ESPN The Magazine 2009 Academic All-District VI team selected and announced this week by CoSIDA, the College Sports Information Directors of America.
Senior outfielder Grant Hogue of Hattiesburg, Miss., was accorded first-team honors while junior second baseman Jet Butler of Pensacola, Fla., and junior third baseman Russ Sneed of Senatobia, Miss., earned second-team honors. Hogue and the first-team selections from the other seven districts become candidates for this year’s ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America Team, to be announced later this spring.
Mississippi State was one of three SEC schools represented on CoSIDA’s academic all-district teams and contributed three of the league’s five honorees for 2009.
Hogue, who graduated last weekend with a 3.80 GPA in marketing, enters the weekend with a .320 batting average and shares the SEC lead with 28 stolen bases, the second-highest single season stolen base total at State. In just two seasons at State Hogue has climbed past three-year and four-year Bulldog standouts to rank fifth with 53 career pilfers.
Sneed also completed his undergraduate degree work at MSU this spring.
He leads the Diamond Dogs with a .350 earned run average, 56 hits and ranks second on the club with nine home runs and 41 RBI. Butler has enjoyed a career-best season at State. He ranks among the team’s leaders at the plate with a .331 batting average, and as the Bulldogs’ starting second baseman has had a hand in 26 of State’s SEC-leading 50 double plays.