Thunder & Lightning: Can Josh Hubbard Carry Mississippi State into March?

Brian Hadad

All-American
Oct 1, 2023
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7,305
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Mississippi State’s superstar Josh Hubbard won the Howell Trophy for the second consecutive season, but the prize he really seeks is a deep run for his team into the NCAA Tournament. Can Hubbard carry this talented but flawed team in the Big Dance? Brian Hadad and Robbie Faulk have a spirited debate over what this Bulldog team needs to do to find any success in March.

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aTotal360

Heisman
Nov 12, 2009
21,762
14,429
113
I think what was lost in translation over the defense/offense conversation was Hadad implying "what is more likely to happen". We've shown we can be more efficient on offense. We haven't shown that we can be better on defense (especially guarding the 3 ball). Not with any consistency.
 

thekimmer

All-Conference
Aug 30, 2012
8,103
2,115
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I think what was lost in translation over the defense/offense conversation was Hadad implying "what is more likely to happen". We've shown we can be more efficient on offense. We haven't shown that we can be better on defense (especially guarding the 3 ball). Not with any consistency.
Yes but I tend to agree with Robbie because we are already scoring at a pretty high level. If we were only scoring 60 points a game then it might be reasonable to score more but when you are putting up 80+ a game it becomes much less reasonable vs playing better defense. That is why I don't give us much hope to do anything in post season play. There is no more time to 'get it together'. We are who we are and right now we can't out score teams in the lower half of the SEC.
 

aTotal360

Heisman
Nov 12, 2009
21,762
14,429
113
Yes but I tend to agree with Robbie because we are already scoring at a pretty high level. If we were only scoring 60 points a game then it might be reasonable to score more but when you are putting up 80+ a game it becomes much less reasonable vs playing better defense. That is why I don't give us much hope to do anything in post season play. There is no more time to 'get it together'. We are who we are and right now we can't out score teams in the lower half of the SEC.
It's both. We suck at shooting the 3 and suck at defending the 3.
 

Darryl Steight

All-American
Sep 30, 2022
3,784
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It's both. We suck at shooting the 3 and suck at defending the 3.
That whole argument sort of comes down to which one is possible to correct at this point in the season? Seems like one is possibly controllable (like, you COULD stop doubling on drives down the lane to help the 3pt defense, we just apparently choose not to), but I don't know what you do to "make more shots". You can't really say - 'come on Josh, just make 2 more shots per game.' That's almost counterproductive because now it's in their heads.

If I were Jans, I'd make a change or two to help out the defense to try to take pressure off the shooters. But hey, what do I know, I'm not a dentist.
 
Nov 16, 2005
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That whole argument sort of comes down to which one is possible to correct at this point in the season? Seems like one is possibly controllable (like, you COULD stop doubling on drives down the lane to help the 3pt defense, we just apparently choose not to), but I don't know what you do to "make more shots". You can't really say - 'come on Josh, just make 2 more shots per game.' That's almost counterproductive because now it's in their heads.

If I were Jans, I'd make a change or two to help out the defense to try to take pressure off the shooters. But hey, what do I know, I'm not a dentist.
Go straight man to man with no traps or double teams in the post or at least just do it situationally. That’s about all you can do at this point.
 
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aTotal360

Heisman
Nov 12, 2009
21,762
14,429
113
That whole argument sort of comes down to which one is possible to correct at this point in the season? Seems like one is possibly controllable (like, you COULD stop doubling on drives down the lane to help the 3pt defense, we just apparently choose not to), but I don't know what you do to "make more shots". You can't really say - 'come on Josh, just make 2 more shots per game.' That's almost counterproductive because now it's in their heads.

If I were Jans, I'd make a change or two to help out the defense to try to take pressure off the shooters. But hey, what do I know, I'm not a dentist.
The defense *should* be the easiest to correct, but it's also been more consistently crap. I think that's Brian's point.

And if it was correctable, why in the hell hasn't it happened?
 

Seinfeld

All-American
Nov 30, 2006
11,154
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The defense *should* be the easiest to correct, but it's also been more consistently crap. I think that's Brian's point.

And if it was correctable, why in the hell hasn't it happened?
And I think that's where the anger was coming from too. With the defense, it seems so easily correctable to at least attempt to reduce the wide open looks from the arc, yet Jans clearly isn't going to make adjustments.

Then with offense, if we'd either hit just a couple more wide open looks from 3 or else shoot less of them in favor of paint points, we probably would've won 4-5 more games this year. But again... this just seems to be impossible for this team because we can all rest assured that some combination of Kugel, Melendez, Hubbard, and Harris is going to go 2-15 from deep every single game.

In other words, I think there's a reason that after all that arguing, they arrived at the exact same conclusion. State's season will be over by next weekend. We just can't fix what seemingly should be simple things to fix