Current basketball situation

[RutherfordBHayes]

From reading social media, it occurs to me that MSU Basketball lost a generation of fans over the last decade or so. From the late 80’s until Rick Ray showed up, most MSU fans were fairly hardcore basketball fans. Not so much now. It’s like most of our posters don’t even understand the game.
But I’m 196 years old, so what do I know?

 

[DoggieDaddy13]

Stans was a strong recruiter and a pretty good coach, but he got reckless with the overall program.

Rick Ray was just a really bad hire... for so many reasons and he would have had to make the Final Four in year 2 in order to bring together a divided fan base after Stans left.

Then consider what the admin has allowed to happen with season ticket holders and student seating - royal 17 up - it will take several winning seasons to dig out of the malaise among fans. Sad, tragic really.

Thought Howland would have us playing better as a team. He's brought in some solid players and the future looks promising. We should still make the tourney, but a run to the sweet 16 would be a miracle.

UK is just good and we still don't come close to matching their talent level. We have to player better team ball to have a chance against a team like that.

Kermit has the Landsharks playing like a team and they have less talent than we do... but maybe not by all that much.

It's frustrating to watch... but last night's loss was inevitable - maybe not by 21, which hurts us as bad a losing to SC and UM.

Just got to play better team ball and fight harder on defense. They did play better D last night... so hopefully.

Hopefully.

 

[crackerjax]

From reading social media, it occurs to me that MSU Basketball lost a generation of fans over the last decade or so. From the late 80’s until Rick Ray showed up, most MSU fans were fairly hardcore basketball fans. Not so much now. It’s like most of our posters don’t even understand the game.
But I’m 196 years old, so what do I know?

When you push everyone who had loyally bought season tickets and showed up to games for years to the upper deck (and still increase rates while much of the lower deck sits empty) you will lose your core fanbase. Sadly, much of the lower deck still sits empty even at SEC games.

The non-competitive teams on the court after Stansbury was let go certainly have not helped.

 

[Phil Wenneck.sixpack]

When I look back over the years, the glaring thing I see that's wrong with us

right now is I see no will to win. Take the road dawg season where we went undefeated on the road. Something unheard of. Those guys, as a whole, didn't have the recruiting stars or near the accolades that our current roster has. But they were grown *** men. They went into a game with a mission and it showed. I haven't seen that with anyone on this current roster and it's frustrating to the point that I can see people losing interest. I don't think it's people not knowing enough about basketball as much as it is they want to see some balls to the wall effort and some kind of urgency.

 

[MSUDC11]

Any student that started school at MSU in the fall of 2009 or anytime since then has yet to see our men’s basketball team play in the NCAA Tournament.

We’ve been mediocre or bad for so long that most of our fans in their 20’s have no idea who Mario Austin or Lawrence Roberts is and have no recollection of when we were really good in the early 2000’s. The younger generation of fans only has memories of our men’s basketball program being a huge disappointment.

 

[the dog is on the loose]

I for one never did like letting Stans go was a good idea. Yes he let the program go down discipline wise but I do think in the long run we would have been really good again with him. Kirby leaving for a HC job hurt us discipline wise IMHO. My thinking has always been that Stans WAS the reason MSU bb was good. Williams may have started it but remember that Stans was an assistant with Williams before he took over. The hiring of RR was a total head scratcher and killed our program. Now we have a coach that I believe that his better days have gone past. I had to tell my thirteen year old daughter how good our mens bb was years ago. All she see's now overall is how good the women are and she loves them.

 

[Dawgzilla]

Our basketball fans have always been fair weather fans, not the hardcore fans you describe. While I agree that Stans had to go, it is true that the weather was usually pretty good under Stans, and we therefore had good fan support.

Put a winning team on the court, and people will support them. Don't win big games, and MSU fans fall back into their comfort zone of being pissed off.

 

[coach66]

Removing Stan's was a mistake, there I said it. The discipline issues could

have been fixed but Scott and to some extent his father in law had other ideas and here we are.

 

[mstateglfr]

right now is I see no will to win. Take the road dawg season where we went undefeated on the road. Something unheard of. Those guys, as a whole, didn't have the recruiting stars or near the accolades that our current roster has. But they were grown *** men. They went into a game with a mission and it showed. I haven't seen that with anyone on this current roster and it's frustrating to the point that I can see people losing interest. I don't think it's people not knowing enough about basketball as much as it is they want to see some balls to the wall effort and some kind of urgency.

Eh...that team was full of 4* talent.

Top100 recruits on that team- Lawrence Roberts, Timmy Bowers, Gary Ervin, Marcus Campbell, Winsome Frazier.
Add in Shane Power who was an accomplished transfer that had averaged 13.6ppg the prior season at ISU and Branden Vincent who was an experienced forward.

6 players with 4* talent plus Vincent.

I get that none were McD AA's like Perry, but that team was deep with quality talent and experience.

 

[Cap'n Geech]

What are y'all's thoughts on where students should be seated? I like the idea of students having at least some sideline seating the way they used to. I also like the idea of it being on the opposite end of the court (where the opponent is trying to make shots in the 2nd half). Example: Sections 101-105, 201-209, and 236. That would leave 106-120 for lower bowl season ticket holders.

 

[Seinfeld]

While the mistake part may be debatable, one thing I will say is that Stansbury is 110% the most under-appreciated head coach we have had at State in my lifetime. Those that want to crucify him for Sidney or X and Os, more power to you, but I'll say two things

1) Stans knew his lane when it came to recruiting, and he often stayed in it. Did that mean he had to take some gambles with personalities at times? Yep, but he knew that success at MSU would require the Rhodes, Bosts, and Sidneys of the world if we ever wanted to make another Final 4 run. He was also PHENOMENAL at filling holes with high profile transfers on a pretty consistent basis.

2) For all the jokes that are made about the Stansbury stall, his teams were almost always some of the toughest rebounding and defensive teams in the entire conference.

He essentially made the NCAA tournament every other year for over a decade with completely different rosters throughout his tenure, but yeah... he sucked. Clearly we've seen how much better we can be over the last 7 years without him

 

[DAWG61]

Removing Stans wasn't a mistake. Not fixing the 17ed up seating arraignments and who gets season tickets is the mistake and it continues to this day to be that way. Wanna be mad at our program be mad at our athletic department and our athletic director for not providing Howland with the best possible Hump atmosphere to play basketball in. Stansbury woulda lost that game last night too. The last time we beat a top 10 ranked team on the road was in 1995 with Richard Williams coaching.

 

[DAWG61]

While the mistake part may be debatable, one thing I will say is that Stansbury is 110% the most under-appreciated head coach we have had at State in my lifetime. Those that want to crucify him for Sidney or X and Os, more power to you, but I'll say two things

1) Stans knew his lane when it came to recruiting, and he often stayed in it. Did that mean he had to take some gambles with personalities at times? Yep, but he knew that success at MSU would require the Rhodes, Bosts, and Sidneys of the world if we ever wanted to make another Final 4 run. He was also PHENOMENAL at filling holes with high profile transfers on a pretty consistent basis.

2) For all the jokes that are made about the Stansbury stall, his teams were almost always some of the toughest rebounding and defensive teams in the entire conference.

He essentially made the NCAA tournament every other year for over a decade with completely different rosters throughout his tenure, but yeah... he sucked. Clearly we've seen how much better we can be over the last 7 years without him

How many NCAA tournament wins did Rhodes, Bost and Sidney have collectively? Stansbury wasn't PHENOMENAL at filling holes with transfers after 2004. He had a great stretch of five years where he got players like Lawrence Roberts, Mario Austin and Shane Power but then the transfers went the other way. They left they didn't come here. Hansbrough was the Big East POY at Notre Dame, Osby led Oklahoma to the NCAA's, the Delk twins transferred, two other guys that got kicked off got drafted, one that went to ULL and one that went to UAB. Ervin transferred to Arkansas and on and on and on. We are currently equal to the last 5 or so years of Stansbury in Howland's 4th season and a lot of you are frustrated. It shouldn't be a surprise then that Stans was retired but yet here we are with some of y'all crying for Stansbury again.

 

[the dog is on the loose]

How was letting Stans go not a mistake? Where the crap has our team been since he left? Sure it's much better now than when the Ray debacle was here but one thing about Stans is that he seemed to love msu and would have retired here if he could have. I remember when posters on here were saying that he needs to go because we couldn't get past the first round of the ncaa tournament. At least we freakin made the tournament! I'm not saying that we should be satisfied with only making the first round and that's it but my first thought when he was let go was who in the crap are we going to get to replace him with. Some idiots on here thought that at the time we were some prestigious bb school that high profile coaches were just waiting to beat the door down to get here. I knew better. Like I said earlier, Stans WAS the reason we had a good bb program. Water under the bridge but dang our adminsitration has made some crappy mistakes over the years and we seem to never learn from them.

 

[DAWG61]

How was letting Stans go not a mistake? Where the crap has our team been since he left? Sure it's much better now than when the Ray debacle was here but one thing about Stans is that he seemed to love msu and would have retired here if he could have. I remember when posters on here were saying that he needs to go because we couldn't get past the first round of the ncaa tournament. At least we freakin made the tournament! I'm not saying that we should be satisfied with only making the first round and that's it but my first thought when he was let go was who in the crap are we going to get to replace him with. Some idiots on here thought that at the time we were some prestigious bb school that high profile coaches were just waiting to beat the door down to get here. I knew better. Like I said earlier, Stans WAS the reason we had a good bb program. Water under the bridge but dang our adminsitration has made some crappy mistakes over the years and we seem to never learn from them.

We were seriously regressing as a program under Stansbury. Look at his peak 2001-2005 and then compare it to 2006-2012. We had multiple issues off the court. Very serious ones that if we kept traveling down that road were going to be very bad for the University. Try to not punish Howland for Rick Ray please. We are currently the same program post season wise that Stansbury left us with after being on the job for 14 years. It's only Howland's 4th. In Stansbury's last 7 seasons he made the dance twice. I feel confident Howland will at least equal that and I expect will surpass it. The difficult thing for Howland to achieve is the level of success Stansbury had from 2001-2005 where he went to 4 straight NCAA's but Howland can top it if he gets us to the 2nd weekend and he might even do that this season. Lot of ball left to be played this year. Try to not compare Howland to 2001-2005 Stansbury cause even Stansbury couldn't get us back to that level after his last 7 years of trying.

 

[patdog]

It's taken us 7 years to get back to where Stans regressed to, a talented team but a bunch of selfish and frustrating underperformers. I was on board with letting him go, but benefit of hindsight, I wish we hadn't. It's ancient history now though, so way past time to move on.

 

[the dog is on the loose]

We were seriously regressing as a program under Stansbury. Look at his peak 2001-2005 and then compare it to 2006-2012. We had multiple issues off the court. Very serious ones that if we kept traveling down that road were going to be very bad for the University. Try to not punish Howland for Rick Ray please. We are currently the same program post season wise that Stansbury left us with after being on the job for 14 years. It's only Howland's 4th. In Stansbury's last 7 seasons he made the dance twice. I feel confident Howland will at least equal that and I expect will surpass it. The difficult thing for Howland to achieve is the level of success Stansbury had from 2001-2005 where he went to 4 straight NCAA's but Howland can top it if he gets us to the 2nd weekend and he might even do that this season. Lot of ball left to be played this year. Try to not compare Howland to 2001-2005 Stansbury cause even Stansbury couldn't get us back to that level after his last 7 years of trying.

I’m not trying to compare howland to stans. While people on here were talking of the lack of discipline when stans was here that would be correct off the court. What I see with our bb team now is lack of discipline on the court and that is directly tied to the HC. If a player is undisciplined in his play such as being a ball hog or creating too many TO’s then you sit his rear on the bench and let him think about it. Also if the team is doing nothing but jacking up three’s and missing them time and again then it’s the coaches job to create set plays and right now I’m just not seeing that. If we don’t have good post play then why don’t we have the players to do that? Again that’s on the HC recruiting wise. I just don’t see any progression from last year. We basically look like the same team when we should be better. I want the team and howland to excell but when is it going to happen? Next year? The next after that?

 

[Dawgzilla]

There were multiple reasons to let Stans go, not all of them related to play on the court. He essentially tied his career to Renardo, and that disaster was the last straw with Stansbury. The fact that we screwed up moving forward from Stansbury does not mean it was the wrong decision to let him go.

HOWEVER, we did screw up moving forward. First, Stricklin was adamant about cutting ties with the AAU pipeline; great in theory, but not a very good idea in practice if you want a talented basketball team. Second, I think Stricklin and company overestimated the interest there would be in the job. I'm not sure how our potential salary stacked up nationally back then, but we had no basketball pedigree, a lukewarm fanbase, and a mediocre basketball conference with no SEC Network. Add all that to the desire to stop playing the AAU game, and you are just not going to be able to hire a quality coach.

 

[Junction John]

Here's one idea:



We were on the sideline back in the old days. And oh, what days they were.

 

[Drewbowski]

have been fixed but Scott and to some extent his father in law had other ideas and here we are.

Someone will correct me, I know, but I always thought that Stans quit rather than fire his assistants?

 

[Drewbowski]

Where did Austin transfer from?

 

[Bulldogg31]

Firing Richard Williams was the mistake, though he didn’t leave much choice I suppose.

Also, State has not ALWAYS been a fair-weather basketball fanbase. I’m somewhere in that video above and I can promise you we packed the Hump whether we were good, average, or bad.

We have to give the students better seats. At least get them on TV.

 

[DAWG61]

Where did Austin transfer from?

My bad he wasn't a transfer we just plucked him away from Alabama and they were mad faced about it. Good point though. Stansbury really wasn't all that he was made out to be on transfers once you got past Roberts and Power. He lost a lot more talent that transferred out than he got to come in especially the last 7 years.

 

[RutherfordBHayes]

Richard Williams had one Tournament team without Erick Dampier. I don’t regret getting rid of him.
Stans was really good not great. Firing him shot us in the foot for hiring the next guy. He had a good reputation in the coaching fraternity, and they thought we did him wrong. We couldn’t get a good coach to look at us. Ended up with Ray.

Our woes have absolutely zero to do with seating. That’s nonsense.

 

[bruiser.sixpack]

Attendance has to do with seating. Most definitely. We have a rare situation not common in more than a half dozen athletics departments. We actually have a baseball program that pays it’s own way. We have a core of loyal baseball fans who will donate to that program in pretty significant $$, errgo a $55 million renovation.

Maybe, we need to make the basketball arena family friendly again in half the arena and student friendly again in the other half.

Yes, I realize the department is making more money off the empty basketball seats, but it just isn’t a good look. And you can’t put that all on fans, especially if the department sold the prime seats to the highest bidder, attendance not necessary.

Fix it Cohen. Fix it now. Cut the capacity down to 8400. Give the students the bottom 12 rows from goal to goal on side opposite the benches. Give them incentives to show up early and loud. Make it where they can stand the entire game. Eliminate the next 3 rows behind them creating a supervised walkway, giving season ticket holders best seats behind the players and all the lower bowl seats above the student section so they can see from their seats. It can be done. Do I need to draw it up for the engineers???