A comment from another thread Made me think....

[hailstate19]

Should we have fired Rick Stansbury at the time we did?

Stansbury was a great coach and I undersatand the program had some problems at the time but I think we made a rash decision because we really didn't have a good coach lined up.

also why does this board hate him so much? He did nothing but good for MSU for a long time.

 

[EngDawg]

And here we go again

 

[hailstate19]

Also I can imagine Rick Ray was probably pretty socked when he was called up to be our head coach.

Also that 2012 season was a huge disappointment but we still haven't had a season nearly as successful since that season

 

[BulldogBlitz]

he should have cut bait with the marshmallow man.

 

[Chesusdog]

Kinda divided on it. We've absolutely sucked since we cut bait. There are hints from Howland that we could get back to a state of semi-relevance, but nothing to really show for it yet. Stansbury at least got us to or near 20 wins even if we did underachieve in the post season. However in the last couple years it seemed like the inmates were running the asylum. Lots of transfers, Retardo Sydney, infighting... a change needed to be made.

 

[engie]

No we shouldn't have. Hindsight on this one couldn't be more clear. And I was in favor of it at the time... Should have let him have the one more year to sink or swim.

 

[msstatelp1]

Stanbury was a good recruiter and an ok coach at best. Great coaches make it past the 2d round of the NCAA and don't **** it up when your players are fighting in the stands on national tv.

 

[57stratdawg]

We lost 5 years and counting. Probably the right call at the time, but here in 2017, it was a mistake.

 

[karlchilders.sixpack]

Real simple

He was no longer "into" what he was doing, he needed a break.

Goes on a trip to a tourney trip to the West coast, takes his family to Disney world.

We go down the tubes.

 

[RutherfordBHayes]

Nm

 

[gymdawg.sixpack]

He was an awful coach. I dont see why folks question that.
Yes he needed to fired....likely after squandering the talent we had in early 2000s. But the ray hire was crap.

 

[civildawg88]

We honestly should have fired him a year earlier. I honestly don’t believe anyone hates stansbury and realize he did really good things for our program

 

[Cousin Jeffrey]

Absolutely. He got another year AFTER the season when our players were fighting each other in the stands on ESPN. He lost the team long before he was fired.

Did he do great things for the program? Absolutely. We should appreciate him for elevating the program. But we became a dumpster fire by the end and he had to go. The fact that we screwed up the next hire doesn’t mean Stansbury shouldn’t have been fired.

The Rick Ray hire was what truly set us back.

 

[hailstate19]

Like what's the story on how we got stuck with Rick Ray? I thought it was because no one else wanted the job?

 

[hailstate19]

The rick ray hire was essentially like the croom hire in football

 

[Bulldogg31]

Renardo Sydney. Cost us 10 years of good basketball. If you saw it in a movie you wouldn't believe it.

 

[hailstate19]

Let's not take it all out on Sydney. Yeah he was a lazy ***, and he had an additude problem but let's not act like he killed the program all by himself. it seems like some of y'all forgot we hired Rick Ray. Rick Ray had no buissness being a head coach.

 

[Drewbowski]

Sidney got Stansbury fired which brought about Rick Ray.

 

[QuadrupleOption]

Should we have fired Rick Stansbury at the time we did?

Stansbury was a great coach and I undersatand the program had some problems at the time but I think we made a rash decision because we really didn't have a good coach lined up.

also why does this board hate him so much? He did nothing but good for MSU for a long time.

No, we shouldn't have fired him when we did. He is the winningest coach in the history of MSU basketball, and he was let go after a winning season.

I'm happy with Howland, don't get me wrong, but I think Stans should have gotten one more year to see if he was able to turn it around.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

We should have fired him after the Hawaiian Punch... one of the most embarrassing moments in Mississippi State history...

 

[MSUDC11]

The problem is that his firing was going to be inevitable. No way we would’ve been good the following year had Stans gotten one more year. We lost A TON from the 2012 team and Rick Ray’s first team was led by mostly Stans recruits.

 

[DAWG61]

Like what's the story on how we got stuck with Rick Ray? I thought it was because no one else wanted the job?

Stricklin went rogue and hired Ray on his own because Kenny Payne was about to get the job and bring World Wide Wes with him. Stricklin is the one to blame for our slow return to relevancy in college basketball. It was absolutely time to go in another direction from Stansbury. Stricklin 17ing up the hire is separate from the decision that is was time to let Stansbury go. Fourteen years is enough. He doesn't deserve to be our head coach for lifetime. Almost nobody does at any school.

 

[dawgstudent]

Looking back - no. At the time, yes.

 

[fishwater99]

Fired a year too late.. But he resigned right??

 

[QuadrupleOption]

The problem is that his firing was going to be inevitable. No way we would’ve been good the following year had Stans gotten one more year. We lost A TON from the 2012 team and Rick Ray’s first team was led by mostly Stans recruits.

You're probably right, but if we'd had a losing season you could have probably gotten a better coach after firing him than who we ended up with.

 

[Wizard of bulldogery]

Yes. He couldn't coach. Good recruiter tho. He better be careful at WKU

 

[kired]

Would we have won more games over the last 5 years? Yes.

Would we have made the tournament? Probably 1 time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but no SEC teams other than Kentucky and Florida have made the tournament more than 2 times in the last 5 seasons. College basketball has changed so much the last 10 years. Stans had a formula to be successful 15 years ago, but things started falling apart and the game began changing. If he stayed, we'd have been better these last 5 years but I don't think we'd have done anything special.

Most MSU fans look at baseball & basketball differently than football. We've experienced more success in those sports than football --- so we don't want to settle of being middle of the pack. I think most power-5 fans around the country feel this way too. We see these no-name schools make a run in the tournament and think anyone should be able to do that, and it pisses us off when we haven't done it in 10-20 years.

Stansbury had gotten stale and there wasn't anything giving us hope that he'd change anytime soon. The problem wasn't firing him --- the problem was who we replaced him with for 3 years.

 

[johnson86-1]

No we shouldn't have. Hindsight on this one couldn't be more clear. And I was in favor of it at the time... Should have let him have the one more year to sink or swim.

I'm the opposite. Hindsight at this point, it's worked out. We have had years of futility, but lots of SEC programs that made much better looking hires than Rick Ray have also had their share of futility. WE would have gotten a better looking hire if we had waited another year, but SEC basketball coaching hires have been such a crap shoot, I think having Rick Ray and then getting Howland is a better result than I think the likely alternative was, which would be muddling through with one (or maybe two at this point) mediocre coaching hires, maybe better results than we've had, but still not tournament teams. That's obviously putting a lot of faith in Howland that has maybe not been justified by the product on teh floor so far.

The reality is that Stansbury was a really good coach for us and while I think it was time for him to go, it was never likely that we were going to hire a replacement that could match his production. I'm ok with the tradeoff of spending years in the wilderness in exchange for getting Howland. Hopefully in a couple of years the hindsight will be much clearer that the tradeoff was worth it.

 

[tcdog70]

Firing Stans was the stupidest move MSU has ever made. We had won more games in a ten year period than anyone except Fla and Ky. We never played a game that we didn't think we could win. Stan had some faults but winning over Twenty game a year has been hard to match. We would never have missed a beat if Stan had stayed. But I do believe we are finally at a point to be back near the top again.

 

[Uncle Ruckus]

The real question is
Why the 17 did we hire Rick Ray? You can’t tell me that he was the only person in the country interested in the job. There are plenty of decent, mid major coaches who would Be interested. I’m not taking about a Shaka or a someone who was having a lot of success, I’m talking about a decent-average coach. Rick Ray wasn’t even a big time assistant. He was a nobody from an average team. So what the 17 is the reason we went with Ray?

 

[hailstate19]

Yeah what was the reasoning behind the Ray hire?