Jeff,
By default CCS does not perform a reset on the core before downloading code, but this can be changed. Check this thread.
The type of reset greatly varies between device families, therefore it is somewhat difficult for us at the CCS forum to precisely know it for every device. For C66x cores I think it runs a Local Reset, which is the only one activated entirely by software. For reference, check section 7.5 of the device's datasheet.
The "entry point" is the symbol/address specified by the project options (more specifically the linker) that is reported as the first instruction to be executed - the debugger is aware of the entry point by extracting this information straight from the .out executable. For the TI compiler tools, this entry point is set to the first routine of the C runtime support library named _c_int00.
When debugging your application the _c_int00 is the first instruction to be executed, therefore no other instructions run before that. However, if your code has specific routines that configure hardware from reset or perform some sort of bootstrap loader, then the entry point would be set to something else but still be perfectly identified by the debugger (the code would eventually branch to the _c_int00 symbol to start the C runtime and reach main()).
Hope this helps,
Rafael