A year away from me watching again? How did you know?
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I tend to agree. Outside of Ado, all our top contributors are fresh or soph and all learning to play together or in different roles. Early season surprised performance gave us all increased expectations. I still like how the team plays, culture, and attitude which we haven't had in a while.
Yes we have room to improve in some execution and coaching areas but so does every team. This group can make a run next year.
Look, Are we fun to watch at times? YES. Are we frustrating to watch at times? ABSOLUTELY. Is our offense concerning at times? YES. Do we play outstanding defense? MOST OF THE TIME. Can we shoot free throws consistently? MOST DEFINITELY NOT. Most said it before the year started that this was a young team and we were going to have some growing pains this year. Right now we are having those growing pains. We tend to play up or down to our competition like most young teams do. I can tell you this though, the talent is there. And look, this team gives consistent effort, which is something we haven't seen from most Howland/Ray/Stans teams. I think as the season continues to progress we will continue to get more consistent.
Bottom Line: This is a team that will make noise next year and has a chance to be one of the best Mississippi State teams ever. Howland deserves to be apart of that. Let him have next year and maybe the year after and he'll be ready to retire and you look a heck of a lot more attractive than you would firing a guy during a pandemic that's coming off back to back 20 win seasons and probably back to back tourney appearances if it wasn't for the tourney being cancelled.
Duh.. we had the three best underclass ALL leave last year and two were Sophomores!
Of course they're better than last year/ But I'm talking about this year. Look at IM. He is still cold as ice in the 1st half and comes out hot at the beginning of the 2nd/ he is now at 44% . DJ is at 39% FG. Tulu has all but disappeared the last few games getting in early foul trouble.
Yes we will be somewhat better next year just because we should have more experience at the guard position. But 80-90% of all college basketball games are decided in the last 5 minutes of a game. I would almost say in fact that, in the majority of games, the first 35 minutes are almost a waste of time unless you let yourself get totally blown out or you blow someone out. So until Howland and staff start doing a WAY better job of coaching their team at the end of games, where in game coaching REALLY counts, especially on the offensive end of the court, we will never live up to our potential under this staff. And this part of Howland's coaching has been pretty rough with every team he has had at MSU. We just win very few games that come down to the very end with this staff because our players don't play smart or understand game situations at the end. Heck, for most end of game situations, the Stansbury stall was actually way more effective than what we get now under Howland. I'm done watching for this year because I know what is going to happen at the end of most every game and don't care to get constantly gut punched game after game. But yes, when the slate gets wiped clean, and we get a bit more experienced with these players, I will be back watching next year to see if we can make some noise. This year is likely gone for any type post-season play anyway, probably even for the NIT. And even in saying all of that, I reiterate that I am not calling for Howland's job because our basketball coaching job is just not very attractive because we, as a fanbase, just don't support basketball very well. Its really our 3rd sport, and with what the women had been doing under Vic, had pretty much slipped to 4th. NMP is taking care of that for us though.
You're welcome. Been supporting MSU athletics as a student and alum for more than 35 years and been a football season ticket holder for most of that time. But MSU sports, like any sports, is entertainment. For any that are still getting entertainment value watching a team continually implode the last few minutes of pretty much every competitive game they play in, then by all means, knock yourself out. Here's hoping next season that will improve with some better coaching.
As bad as Ray was, his teams did play with effort and gave 100 percent. They just had no talent and Ray didn?t know what he was doing. I wish we could?ve taken that heart and effort and put them into Stans and Howlands past teams, but this team does seem to have that. We just need to hope Howland can improve and adjust offensively
It took a decade to get back to something like what we were under Stans. Hopefully we aren't about to do it again.
Howland desperately, and I mean DESPERATELY, needs to trade out an assistant coach for someone that can help with offensive game planning and execution. Until we get that its going to be hard to ever get past that 'pretty good' level that we were even with 3 NBA future players, in addition to Tyson Carter, Aric Holman and Lamar Peters all on the same team. Howland will likely never have a roster that talented again. But we just have way too many game where we even struggle to break 50 points. You just can't win many basketball games against really good teams like that today just like you can't win many football games 17-14 these days.
Eh you can basically break college basketball down for non blue bloods like us like this.
Get a coach that can coral a lot of talent and wait for the cards to fall just right. Howland can do that and if we don't get dumb and fire him he will luck up over the next couple of years and have a roster that is blended well with upperclassmen and some talented younger guys and they will make a run.
As long as he keeps recruiting at a decent level we shouldn't get rid of him IMO. As others have stated if you fire him now we will be right back where we were before he was here. Let him coach out his last couple of years and ride off into the sunset. it will provide some stability and we will be set up well to make the next hire.
I don't understand how some of yall function day to day as negative as yall always are unless you just use this board to vent and are actually fairly normal the rest of the time. But man, I know I would be miserable if I was always a negative nancy.
Anyone who thinks this team is a year away from anything special without some significant coaching changes on the offensive end of the floor is just dreaming.
This was an awful game. It happens... esp with young teams. Hell, tenn (a good team that just blasted Kansas) made 2 fgs the last 10 mins tonight vs OM. Crap happens. Next year may not be a good season, but it won't be bc we sucked butt tonight. We played 3 really good games in a row before tonight that only resulted in 1 win, but the play was encouraging.
1 year away my ass
Why are we so bad?
Alabama made a run with Mark Gottfried as their coach. LSU made the final 4 with John Brady. Neither were exactly basketball masterminds. If you get talent together consistently enough, you will make a run.
As much as people liked to bitch about Stansbury's tournament performance, it really wasn't that bad. THe results sucked, but it's mainly just luck. He got screwed with the Texas draw; we played fine. We didn't extend the defense against Butler; that was on him. A red hot Xavier team got us one year. He had two teams that were playing really well during the tournament but screwed themselves by underachieving to the 8/9 slot, and one team that only got there because they got hot at the SEC tourney and played their normal, uninspired basketball against Washington. Had one of the high seeded teams played to their ability like the teams that lost to Duke and Memphis, his tournament record looks a lot different.
If Howland coaches long enough putting together talent like he has, he will catch lightning in a bottle too. Not sure if he's got enough years left to do it, but what he is doing now isn't hurting the program.
Look we had a bad night last night, a historically bad night judging by our TOs, but this one game isn't an indictment on Howland. It's like we've said most of the year, WE'RE YOUNG. Everyone needs to just relax a bit. We weren't going to make the tournament this year anyways. This was always about building for next year. Now, like most have said, if everyone comes back next year he MUST make the tournament to feel safe about his job. He's going to have far too much talent as well as experience.