Choosing to believe in any kind of different outcome than one that has preceded not once, not twice, but three times before in exactly the same fashion may not be considered a rule of insanity. But we might be getting close.
Last season Mississippi State finished 8-10 in conference play. The season before they finished 8-10 in conference play. The season before that they finished 8-10 in conference play. All under Chris Jans. What’s fun is the Bulldogs finished 8-10 under Ben Howland the two years
before that. So for FIVE straight seasons, and varying degrees of league quality, and two different head coaches, Mississippi State have won eight and lost ten games in the SEC. Keeping with the theme they won one game in the SEC Tournament every year… except for one year when they won two. It’s like Doctor Strange stuck the program in a time loop, doomed to repeat the same existence.
Only the faces change year after year.
Last year the Bulldogs had their best statistical finish since 2019. But it remained another season of 21 wins, double digit losses, and 8-10 in SEC play.
So what’s in store for the Clanga faithful this season? Surely not another 8-10 season, right? Right?
Previous SEC Previews:
- 10. Vanderbilt Commodores, 8-10
- 11. Texas A&M Aggies, 8-10
- 12. Oklahoma Sooners, 8-10
- 13. Ole Miss Rebels, 7-11
- 14. Georgia Bulldogs, 6-12
- 15. South Carolina Gamecocks, 4-14
- 16. LSU Tigers, 3-15
Mississippi State Bulldogs
- Last season: 21 – 13 (8-10 in conference) #33
- The Masses Prediction: 13th in conference, 6.79 – 11.21
- SEC Media: 10th in conference
- Analytics Average: 9th in conference, 30th overall
HEAD COACH: Chris Jans | 4th Season, 63-40
I often like to try to find absurd photos of the conference coaches whenever possible for these pieces because those are the pictures which rarely see the light of day. And nearly all of the coaches have some absurd shots. But Chris Jans is one of the best because he looks like he’s just constantly angry and flustered by anything that’s happening in the basketball game regardless of whether it’s good or bad for his team.
Jans is a really good fit for Starkville. It remains to be seen if he can lift the program up any further than he’s done so far, which is to provide a slightly better and more consistent product than his predecessor. But he’s quick to rebuild, and assembles a competitive roster.
He’s a grinder, and you need to be a grinder in a league where other programs can throw big football money around to lure in splashier players and coaches. To his credit, Jans has a healthy amount of media types who will carry water for him as an upper echelon coach in the league. I’m not sure about that much, but Jans has at least fielded tough, physical teams, who can hang with most of the league, on most days. Maybe that isn’t a ringing endorsement State fans want to hear. Jans is at least quality, but the jury is out on if he can be more.
That’s some pretty remarkable consistency, which not every program can point to. The Rick Ray years are officially behind the program in a sense it was more than 10 years ago, and we’re just now seeing just the Howland recovery and the Jans years.
But as consistent as Howland was, he only had one NCAA Tournament trip. His success was in an era when the SEC was a much worse off league, and now Jans is competing when the league is arguably as good as it’s ever been.
LOST PRODUCTION
9th in % minutes, 70.73% | 6th in % points, 68.79% | 8th in % possessions, 70.90%
“Cameron Matthews, so long friend. You’ll be missed.” Signed, Chris Jans. But really, Matthews has been such a fixture in Starkville it will be weird seeing the Bulldogs take the floor without him. Matthews wasn’t a big scorer, he left that to Josh Hubbard, but he did everything else and he made their defense so much tougher.
From a production standpoint, MSU is going full reset on the wing and in the post with Riley Kugel, RJ Melendez, and Claudell Harris all graduated, plus KeShawn Murphy and Michael Nwoko transferred. That’s six of the top 7 from a team who did not often go too deep into their bench. Jans is returning only two rotational players, and one of them only took about two shots per game. With so much production lost, guess what MSU did to provide the solution? The Transfer Portal!
This whole thing begins and ends with the production of Josh Hubbard. Easily one of the best scoring guards in the country, Hubbard has been the driver for the MSU offense since he first stepped foot on campus in Starkville. After averaging 17.1 points a game as a freshman, Hubbard increased that to 18.9 points a contest last year. Hubbard is more of a shooting guard with positional size to play the point, than a true point guard. Although he did increase his assist rate last year by a good margin, Hubbards first and second goal is to create shots for himself. But the reasons is because he’s just really good at scoring the ball. He sports a 120+ offensive rating, and gets to his favored shot, the jumper, with consistency. Hubbard took nearly four times as many jump shots as he took shots in the lane or at the rim, and you can expect much of the same this year.
The only other rotational player to return is Shawn Jones, Jr, a versatile defender who excels in transition, but rarely looks at the rim in the half court. I think Dellquan Warren is worth keeping an eye on as well, he’s a former top 150 prospect with good quickness and flashed the ability to spell minutes at the point guard last year.
The transfer portal class is a mixed bag, but led by efficiency monster Quincy Ballard. A 7’0 center who rarely touches the ball but has an 141 offensive rating when he does and led the country in eFG% and TS% last year, Ballard also rebounds the ball extremely well. He’s not a one for one swap with past MSU bigs, but Ballard should fit well in Starkville.
The addition of Jayden Epps is an interesting one, he’s a bit of a volume scorer where MSU didn’t need one of those. A floor spacing shooter would have done a lot more good, but perhaps Ja’Borri McGhee could be that. He shot over 40% from outside despite only taking 68 threes last year. And Brandon Walker was a high usage, and high scoring part time post player at Montana State.
The recruiting class is a good one to build on with both King Grace and Tee Bartlett in the top 100. Jamarion Davis-Fleming is also the younger brother of former MSU forward Javian Davis who had a solid career at UAB also.
Plug in Josh Hubbard and figure the rest out, I guess.
Jans is used to being flexible and for the second year in a row he’s really having to over turn his roster, but for the second year in a row he gets to start with his best player sticking around.
Probably the biggest key will be whether or not Achor Achor returns to his breakout season at Samford two years ago, and can avoid whatever issues caused him to be dismissed from the roster at Kansas State last winter. At Samford Achor scored over 16 points per game and many of those as a roller as part of the pick and roll. He doesn’t take a lot of threes, but two years ago he made them at 44% clip, suggesting some pick and pop potential. If Achor is that player again, it opens up a lot of possibilities for the Bulldogs.
Mainly because Ballard isn’t much of an offensive weapon past sticking the ball back in, or dunking dump offs. One third of his possessions amounted to offensive putbacks, and a handful more as the roll man. But with Ballard there’s no mystery about where he’s going if he starts the play setting a screen up top… he’s rolling to the rim. Ballard has attempted all of one three pointer in his career, and I’m willing to guess that was either a desperation heave or an incorrectly assigned shot attempt.
Jans is one of the better schedule builders in the conference, he strategically puts things together in a way where he’s likely to rack up a few really quality wins before reaching conference play. Obviously playing Iowa State early and on a neutral is a difficult game, but there won’t be any punishment for that type of loss. But if you win that one, an undefeated non-con run could be in the cards.
Kansas State, Nebraska, SMU, Georgia Tech, Utah, Memphis… they’re all quality teams but there isn’t a guaranteed NCAA Tournament team in the lot.
The conference schedule is manageable, Alabama and Missouri are projected ahead of MSU but not necessarily enough where the Bulldogs wouldn’t be a home favorite. They also get Florida and Kentucky, arguably the two best teams, on the road where you aren’t expected to win.
THE RULING
You could convince me that Chris Jans keeps putting together worse and worse rosters just to see how far he can go while still getting to 8-10 in conference play.
It helps when you have a locked in scoring guard like Hubbard, he can overcome a lot of roster deficiencies.
But someone else is going to have to score and each spot is a question mark. Jayden Epps has been a high usage player in the past, but not on good teams, and he’s never been particularly efficient. Maybe Ja’Borrie McGhee will be able to take some of the ball handling duties away from Hubbard, but McGee only averaged around 11 points per game at UAB so he’s not likely to be the secondary scorer.
Amier Ali is a former 4-star top 100 recruit who was in the rotation on a bad Arizona State team last year. But he’s got some upside. And the long term prospects in the high school class are certainly promising.
But who helps them this year?
It might really come down to Achor, who certainly can be what they need. You can see the framework of McGhee as the primary ball handler getting the ball to Hubbard who runs a ball screen with Achor and looks to get to his spots for a jumper. With McGee and Epps spaced and Ballard around to collect misses. It’s not awful.
But is it enough in what should be another excellent year for the SEC? That I don’t know. What’s clear is Jans is creative enough to make this work. And secretly I’m hoping for another season of 8-10 Bulldog basketball just for a hint of schadenfreude.
My Results: Mississippi State Bulldogs — 9th in Conference, 8-10
About the preview: a number of respected basketball bloggers were asked to submit one pick for the entire league schedule game by game. The game by game option allows us to account for the unbalanced schedule when addressing any kind of power rankings. Each set of picks are reflected in “the Masses” picks. Included in “the Masses” are various SEC media members who made picks at my request, as well as additional credit given to the analytics projections.
If you’d like to submit your picks, click here for the Google Form we used. If you want to know your results, send me an email.
Additionally, instead of relying solely on KenPom.com for the analytics site projections, we’re taking the average of the four main sites (EvanMiya.com, BartTorvik.com, Haslametrics.com, and KenPom.com) to give a closer consensus picture. These are weighted a touch for reliability.
The projections: This is new! In an attempt to be as accurate as we could be we increased the amount of analytics used to make individual projections which influenced how these teams slotted in order. Matt Watkins used an in-depth method for projecting the entire SEC transfer list, we then mixed in EvanMiya.com’s BPR projections, and BartTorvik.com’s preseason individual projections to round out the expected production based upon how each coach routinely uses his rotations.
GLOSSARY
* – an asterisk denotes a walk-on player
GP – Games Played
%min – percentage of total available minutes played, does not account for time missed due to injury
%poss – percentage of team possessions the player is responsible for ending a possession, whether by making a shot, missing a shot not rebounded by the offense or committing a turnover. For returning players this is noted as a percentage of total team possessions. For newcomers it was total possessions when that player was on the floor, better known as Usage Rate.
ORtg – Offensive Rating, similar to a points per possession but averaged out over 100 possessions. So it’s how many points a player would score if they were responsible for 100 possessions.
BPR – Bayseian Performance Rating, a single player efficiency metric created by Evan Miyakawa to determine both offensive and defensive impact when a player is on the floor.
PAR – Points Above Replacement, a Rock M+ proprietary rating measuring projected on-off impact adjusted for time on the floor.
PPG – Points Per Game, RPG – Rebounds Per Game, APG – Assists Per Game: All traditional statistics used to measure player production.
For newcomer player rankings, we used EvanMiya.com’ s rankings for transfers, and 247sports.com ‘s Composite Rating for Freshmen and Junior College signees.
