The Jans Experience is Over

[msstate7]

We were down 13 points with 5 minutes to go against UNO in basketball. We were 20+ point favorites. We won on an OT buzzer beater that was a horrible offensive sequence resulting in a low quality shot that banked in.

Do not try to "well actually we won" that game. Those of us who watched know how god awful we played.

We went 15-29 from FT. Josh Hubbard went 5-12. Somehow in year 4 our guys are regressing at the FT line after Jan's has already shown that he doesn't fix a single guy at the line's shot. Someone also wanted the FBI to look into the point shaving. The O/U closed at 160.5. It was 81-78 (159 total) w/ .2 left and the refs decided to take the opportunity to expose Hubbard's point shaving even more. He bricked two more FTs.

Last night was embarassingly bad. The past week is a sign that State will be lucky to win a conference game. This is the worst looking team we've had since Rick Ray years. Might be worse - who knows where true rock bottom is.

These are not games you play close and just find a way to win. These are games you win by 20 and get guys some work. State right now needs a serious change of style and cohesion otherwise this will quickly become a lost year.

For the record, my fbi comment was a joke. My expectations for this season have bottomed out, and I don't see myself getting too worked up over MBK.

I'll also add in previous seasons, we've had some close calls to bad teams, and we even lost to a swac school. With this team though, well, let's just say I don't feel good about them. Perhaps Josh, Epps, and Ali have another gear

[Tater]

The way we're playing is unacceptable, and I don't think we're a good team.

But to say "the experiment is over" is just stupid lol.

The guy made the tournament 3 years in a row. We can argue postseason success and all of that, but if Chris Jans makes the tournament 3 out of every 4 years, he'll go down as the best coach we've ever had. Step back from the ledge people.

I'd argue with how college basketball is trending that we've been more of a benefactor of NIL / transfer portal / covid year than exceptional coaching. Two of those things are leveling out across the playing field while NIL is having some adverse side effects (see Kanye Clary).

Every SEC school making the tournament is going to be the norm within 10 years and missing the tournament is probably a fireable offense.

Not just losing to UNO but playing 35 minutes of atrocious basketball and being down 10+ should never happen. Box score watching does not emphasize how bad last night was.

Zigging with a defensive experiment that forgoes FTs and 3s in the FTs and 3s era is both frustrating to watch and yielding frustrating results. We're six games in and so far:

Trailed by 9 in the second half against North Alabama (24 point favorites)
Lost by double digits and never competed against Iowa State
Led by as little as 2 against SELA in the second half and only won by 7 (27 point favorites)
Never competed against Kansas State and lost a game we were favored to win by 21
Earned a transitive loss to Jans last school, New Mexico State, by losing to New Mexico. (This honestly is the only game so far on the schedule that at least is somewhat ok - but again shows we struggle to beat tourney teams)
Then last night's pathetic performance against UNO - down 13 with 5 to go.

Objectively - we gotta ask are we getting the ROI that we should be here? We're paying a coach 4 million. We're paying a ton in basketball NIL. Yet we have no tourney wins and look worse offensively and are seeing players regress under Jans tutelage. Sure historically this would be a good run for State. Historically we also didn't pay players to this degree nor a coach this high of a salary.

The standard shouldn't be our past. The standard should be our SEC peers. And right now - Jans is bottom 3 relative to his peers.

[KOdawg1]

I'd argue with how college basketball is trending that we've been more of a benefactor of NIL / transfer portal / covid year than exceptional coaching. Two of those things are leveling out across the playing field while NIL is having some adverse side effects (see Kanye Clary).

Every SEC school making the tournament is going to be the norm within 10 years and missing the tournament is probably a fireable offense.

Not just losing to UNO but playing 35 minutes of atrocious basketball and being down 10+ should never happen. Box score watching does not emphasize how bad last night was.

Zigging with a defensive experiment that forgoes FTs and 3s in the FTs and 3s era is both frustrating to watch and yielding frustrating results. We're six games in and so far:

Trailed by 9 in the second half against North Alabama (24 point favorites)
Lost by double digits and never competed against Iowa State
Led by as little as 2 against SELA in the second half and only won by 7 (27 point favorites)
Never competed against Kansas State and lost a game we were favored to win by 21
Earned a transitive loss to Jans last school, New Mexico State, by losing to New Mexico. (This honestly is the only game so far on the schedule that at least is somewhat ok - but again shows we struggle to beat tourney teams)
Then last night's pathetic performance against UNO - down 13 with 5 to go.

Objectively - we gotta ask are we getting the ROI that we should be here? We're paying a coach 4 million. We're paying a ton in basketball NIL. Yet we have no tourney wins and look worse offensively and are seeing players regress under Jans tutelage. Sure historically this would be a good run for State. Historically we also didn't pay players to this degree nor a coach this high of a salary.

The standard shouldn't be our past. The standard should be our SEC peers. And right now - Jans is bottom 3 relative to his peers.

IMG_4742.jpeg

[R2Dawg]

It is very early to really know, it is never how you start in Basketball it's how you finish! I know this firsthand, Jans isn't stupid and I expect us to play better.

Agree, Jans mixes up the lineups this time of year too. We have some talent just raw and team chemistry isn't there right now.

I don't think I called Jans stupid? Sure he is smart and all these coaches do the best they can with what they got in the lottery transfer game every year.

[StarkVegasSteve]

Last night was not good and the stats bear that out. A few positives though:

1. We won. Please do not let that get lost in all this. We were down 66-53 with 5:14 to go and they scored 2 points the rest of the way in regulation. Sometimes you have to find ways to win on your worst nights, even if you're a bad team.

2. We won without our second scoring option in Epps and without one of our bench guys in Macura. That seems to be getting lost in all of this. We lost 2 guys who are in our top 7. Other guys stepped up.

3. We may have found something with Ali. The kid plays hard and can attack the basket. If it was me, I'd replace Achor with Ali moving forward. Ali is longer and gives us a little more defensively.


Any way you slice it, last night was not good. But it would've been EXPONENTIALLY worse with a loss. For the folks that are saying we need to fire Jans, get a damn grip. The guy has taken us to 3 straight tournaments. He's went to one of those tournaments with ZERO shooting. This team is still trying to gel and when they do we'll be fine. I'm not predicting us to get to the S16 or anything, but if we can get going, we're going to be just fine in the long term. We have a couple of these games every damn year. Last year we struggled with Prairie View and were run off the floor by a bad Butler team. Two years ago, we lost to freaking Southern and were dominated by a god awful Georgia Tech team.

[Tater]

IMG_4742.jpeg

*checks bingo spot for Mississippian bragging about its illiteracy off my Thanksgiving bingo card*

[Tater]

Last night was not good and the stats bear that out. A few positives though:

1. We won. Please do not let that get lost in all this. We were down 66-53 with 5:14 to go and they scored 2 points the rest of the way in regulation. Sometimes you have to find ways to win on your worst nights, even if you're a bad team.

2. We won without our second scoring option in Epps and without one of our bench guys in Macura. That seems to be getting lost in all of this. We lost 2 guys who are in our top 7. Other guys stepped up.

3. We may have found something with Ali. The kid plays hard and can attack the basket. If it was me, I'd replace Achor with Ali moving forward. Ali is longer and gives us a little more defensively.


Any way you slice it, last night was not good. But it would've been EXPONENTIALLY worse with a loss. For the folks that are saying we need to fire Jans, get a damn grip. The guy has taken us to 3 straight tournaments. He's went to one of those tournaments with ZERO shooting. This team is still trying to gel and when they do we'll be fine. I'm not predicting us to get to the S16 or anything, but if we can get going, we're going to be just fine in the long term. We have a couple of these games every damn year. Last year we struggled with Prairie View and were run off the floor by a bad Butler team. Two years ago, we lost to freaking Southern and were dominated by a god awful Georgia Tech team.

It's the same story every year. No outside shooting. Guys regressing at the FT line. Cool we locked up ****ing UNO for 5 minutes on defense. That's Jans signature - we have 5 minute spurt of defense every game where the opponent doesn't score. Too bad when we play teams with a pulse they just take the 5 minutes of porous defense we have and score 30 in that.

Again - it's ridiculous for us to judge against Mississippi State historically when the recruiting / portal / NIL are vastly different. The SEC and B10 are setup to be half of the NCAA tourney moving forward just because of the patch on the jersey and the "SoS" (aka money spent by everyone on the rosters). We're worse than our peers in that regard.

Maybe we come together and use last night as rock bottom. More likely - we crater and are all enjoying baseball season in March.

[msstate7]

It's the same story every year. No outside shooting. Guys regressing at the FT line. Cool we locked up ****ing UNO for 5 minutes on defense. That's Jans signature - we have 5 minute spurt of defense every game where the opponent doesn't score. Too bad when we play teams with a pulse they just take the 5 minutes of porous defense we have and score 30 in that.

Again - it's ridiculous for us to judge against Mississippi State historically when the recruiting / portal / NIL are vastly different. The SEC and B10 are setup to be half of the NCAA tourney moving forward just because of the patch on the jersey and the "SoS" (aka money spent by everyone on the rosters). We're worse than our peers in that regard.

Maybe we come together and use last night as rock bottom. More likely - we crater and are all enjoying baseball season in March.

Perhaps you're right... which sec teams have made the tourney 3 of last 3 seasons?

[msstate7]

Here's a top 10 in nil spending in MBK...

https://collegefootballnetwork.com/m...r-this-season/

...

I wish it were a longer list, but it gives you a glimpse into MBK. The sec isn't gonna spend like they do in football compared to the rest of the country.

[R2Dawg]

Here's a top 10 in nil spending in MBK...

https://collegefootballnetwork.com/m...r-this-season/

...

I wish it were a longer list, but it gives you a glimpse into MBK. The sec isn't gonna spend like they do in football compared to the rest of the country.

That is very interesting. How in the world does the SEC win games and titles not spending the most money on NIL?

According to football experts, if you are not #1 in NIL, you can't win. Can anyone explain this? Only one SEC team in top 10 UK (no surprise) but they can't win big in the lowly SEC who don't spend national money in NIL?

[msugolf]

Here's a top 10 in nil spending in MBK...

https://collegefootballnetwork.com/m...r-this-season/

...

I wish it were a longer list, but it gives you a glimpse into MBK. The sec isn't gonna spend like they do in football compared to the rest of the country.

That list isn?t accurate. There?s some mixed truths in there but Evan even states in there that it only includes transfers and not entire rosters.

[Homedawg]

Here's a top 10 in nil spending in MBK...

https://collegefootballnetwork.com/m...r-this-season/

...

I wish it were a longer list, but it gives you a glimpse into MBK. The sec isn't gonna spend like they do in football compared to the rest of the country.

If you believe the numbers on that list I've got some land to sell you. It's not even remotely close.

[Coach34]

If you believe the numbers on that list I've got some land to sell you. It's not even remotely close.

yeah no doubt. We spent more than whats posted on that list. UPig and Kentucky spent $20MM plus

[msstate7]

If you believe the numbers on that list I've got some land to sell you.

So where do you think we are? Top 20? Top 37? I use 37 bc there are 37 at large bids in the ncaa tourney.

[msstate7]

yeah no doubt. We spent more than whats posted on that list. UPig and Kentucky spent $20MM plus

That's was estimated on transfers only

[Coach34]

So where do you think we are? Top 20? Top 37? I use 37 bc there are 37 at large bids in the ncaa tourney.

Supposedly we are middle to lower middle of the pack in the SEC

[msstate7]

Supposedly we are middle to lower middle of the pack in the SEC

And that's good for us. That would still put us 30-40th nationwide or worse

[WSOPdawg]

We went 15-29 from FT. Josh Hubbard went 5-12. Somehow in year 4 our guys are regressing at the FT line after Jan's has already shown that he doesn't fix a single guy at the line's shot. Someone also wanted the FBI to look into the point shaving. The O/U closed at 160.5. It was 81-78 (159 total) w/ .2 left and the refs decided to take the opportunity to expose Hubbard's point shaving even more. He bricked two more FTs.

This exact thought actually crossed my mind as I watched Josh shoot FT's last night as if he was Shaquille O'neil... totally unlike the automatic FT-making machine we know Josh is. With betting scandals now prevalent in MLB, NBA, NCAAhoops, UFC, etc. it's almost impossible for a spectator or fan to even think about placing a bet anymore.

[tcdog70]

Wish we could’ve kept Nowoko. We won, although Epps didn’t play and Hub was awful for most of the game. We would have won by ten if we hadn’t missed so many free throws. Hub missed many. Jan’s is trying to find out the right mixture. I’m hold out for a few more games before I’m on the fire Jan’s train.

[Coach34]

lol- we arent firing coaches with huge buyouts left. Jan has 3 more years left after this season