By Brad Locke

Daily Journal

STARKVILLE – John Carroll and his friends had everything they needed: two tents, pillows, an ice chest filled with Mountain Dew and Hawaiian Punch, and a deck of Rook cards.

Yes, the Mississippi State students went camping Sunday night – in front of the Colvard Student Union.

Carroll and his buddies were the first in line to buy student season tickets, which went on sale at 7 a.m. Monday. By the time the buying frenzy ended at 6 p.m., MSU had unloaded a little more than 9,100 tickets on its student body.

“As one person said to me, it’s like when you throw a party and everyone shows up,” said Mike Richey, MSU’s associate athletics director for ticket operations. “Very satisfying.”

MSU anticipates selling 11,000 student tickets based on last year’s number (10,997), and that would be considered a sellout of the student section.

It would also make official the season tickets sales record the school has already claimed – more than 31,000 season tickets had been sold before student tickets went on sale, so the student total would help break last year’s record of 40,901.

Carroll said his group plus about 30 other students spent the night at the Union, and by 7 a.m., he estimated there were 150 people in line, a line that Carroll said eventually stretched all the way to Allen Hall, where school President Mark Keenum’s office is located.

“I’ve never seen this many people getting tickets Day 1,” said Carroll, a senior chemical engineering major from Meridian.

The number of tickets sold Monday broke the single-day student record of 7,009, set last year. Like the rest of the MSU fan base, the students are anticipating great things from coach Dan Mullen in his second year as head coach.

“People think that we’re ready to go back to winning this year,” Carroll said, “and they just want to be a part of it.”

Contact Brad Locke at 678-1571 or brad.locke@djournal.com