In case you begin to forget.....
- Thread starter dawgphd
- Start date
Okay, ...
Stans last year was a big letdown, no excuse BUT he still won 21 games and finished 8-8 in the SEC. You can call it a 'slide' if you want BUT he won more SEC games his last year than Ray has or probably will in THREE YEARS.
Stans last year was a big letdown, no excuse BUT he still won 21 games and finished 8-8 in the SEC. You can call it a 'slide' if you want BUT he won more SEC games his last year than Ray has or probably will in THREE YEARS.
Undoubtably had a "good" last season, but he lost every starter without any quality depth coming in and the depth that was there was getting booted from the team. That's the slide part.
The slide started before that season ever began and had nothing to do wins and losses. That team had the most talent of any Stans team, but they couldn't stand each other.
Slide?......
Stans last team won 21 games and went to the post season. We might have dipped in the year after but that is exactly where we would be again right now if he was still here.
Stans last team won 21 games and went to the post season. We might have dipped in the year after but that is exactly where we would be again right now if he was still here.
To have a good basketball team, you have to have at least 7-8 good players, and that team had maybe 4 players that were good enough to play on a real top 25 team. And one of those, Hood, missed key games late with an injury. When Deville Smith went out of the team and Hood god injured, it just slowly unravelled. We simply did not have a complete team. We had three of the top five players in the league in minutes played.
That doesn't excuse Stans; he was responsible for recruiting. But I don't think you can say it had more talent than other teams that not only had players drafted but also had other good starters and a quality bench.
That doesn't excuse Stans; he was responsible for recruiting. But I don't think you can say it had more talent than other teams that not only had players drafted but also had other good starters and a quality bench.
the 'slide' is the biggest BS misconception from the anti-RS crowd... We were 3 years removed from back to back NCAAs followed up by being the first 24 win Power 5 conference team to ever get left out of the tourney (not to mention, we were 30 seconds away from beating UK twice in one season). How horrible we were...
Go check out the other SEC teams and tell me how many would love to have that right now(including us)...
Go check out the other SEC teams and tell me how many would love to have that right now(including us)...
From 6 NCAA appearances plus an NIT Final Four in 8 years, to an NIT 2nd round and an NIT 1st round in the last 3 years is a slide. But Stansbury wasn't fired for his record. He was fired because our program had become a national joke and he couldn't keep decent players in the program (Hansbrough, the 2 Delks, etc.).
Valid points. Lack of depth for sure. Prob better to say that starting five had more talent than any Stans team. Two first rounders, a five star in Sydney, good point guard in bost. My point was that any slide our basketball team encountered was not due to lack of talent. It was off the court issues. And to be clear, I was perfectly fine with reading Stans the riot act and telling him to get his off court crap in order without firing him.
Technically, we're not a national joke any more. We're just ignored. Quit being an *** about this. Absolutely NO ONE is defending Rick Ray or saying they want to give him another year. He's definitely not the answer. But I don't think being a regular laughingstock on SportsCenter with no NCAA tournament appearances to show for it is the answer either.
No offense but I don't think you get to call me the '***' here... You are sticking to a flawed argument. I maintain that we were REALLY far from the national joke that was predicated here and by some of the media. Those same media were the same ones writing about how the previous year we 30 seconds away from beating UK twice in one season and winning 24 games... So, we were a years in the making dumpster fire or we had a really stupid national incident that wasn't nearly as 'nationally' known as we think it was... It was horrible, don't get me wrong. But, after that season, no one gave a ****. Only ones that did were mostly here and they helped institute the change that we have today... So, in essence, 17 you and your precious sensibilities..
YOU are the one defending the argument for why I even know who the 17 Rick Ray is.
YOU are the one defending the argument for why I even know who the 17 Rick Ray is.
Sorry, but you're either intentionally being an *** or you're really not smart enough to realize there are other options besides being laughed at on national TV regularly and losing to mediocre teams in the early rounds of the NIT or being the worst team in major college basketball. We will go with one of those other options next year. Meanwhile, there's not much to be gained by bitching about something that happened 3 years ago.
We can put it in SAT terms:
Stansbury is to embarrassment off the court as Ray is to embarrassment on the court.
Stansbury is to embarrassment off the court as Ray is to embarrassment on the court.
I'm not wading into this argument but I can honestly say there were many, many people criticizing our program, including respected members of the national media, and had been since the Hawaii trip when Bailey got booted from the team it became evident that Rick was never going to do anything about Sidney. That's undeniable. The fight, the constant suspensions (Renardo, Ravern, Kodi, Moultrie, Bost, etc), the on-court performances, etc. There's a reason that national media members were getting their licks in. We were low hanging fruit. High enough profile that people knew us, but indefensible in the state of the program. Easy money.
At the same time, I don't recall any notable national media member writing about our two losses to Kentucky in the context of being 30 seconds from 24 wins. Oh that's right, Pat Forde wrote about the first loss, the home loss. He wrote that our fans say the most vile and disgusting things of any team he's ever covered. A bunch of them wrote about DeMarcus Cousins and his accusation that he got racist texts. When we lost to them in Nashville, all that was said was that our bubble had burst, since practically everyone knew we had to win that one to get in.
When Andy Katz says it's time - it's time because Andy Katz was a Stansbury apologist until the very end. He was basically Hugh Kellenberger on a national scale for Stansbury. We would get good pub even when it wasn't deserved.
I feel like a tragedy is a lot easier to recover from than a joke...
The gift and the curse of college basketball post-Kobe Bryant is that, outside maybe 3 teams at any given time (today, this is Duke/Kentucky/Louisville) there is no longer continuity.
Between one and dones and the de facto farm system that exists today, every team is basically in a consistent cycle of rebuilding.
Coaching wise, it's just getting the right guy in at the right time. I think it's a lot easier to find the right guy to clean up a program that is just losing versus cleaning up a decently talented program with severe character issues.
And let's be honest, the national joke wasn't just the fight in the stands, it was things like Ravern's twitter rants, the weird 'he said, she said' between him and Phil Turner, the Renardo recruitment, Dee Bost's 9 hour declaration and the subsequent 5 games in 5 days and the general adversarial (not supervisory) position he took against his players.
The gift and the curse of college basketball post-Kobe Bryant is that, outside maybe 3 teams at any given time (today, this is Duke/Kentucky/Louisville) there is no longer continuity.
Between one and dones and the de facto farm system that exists today, every team is basically in a consistent cycle of rebuilding.
Coaching wise, it's just getting the right guy in at the right time. I think it's a lot easier to find the right guy to clean up a program that is just losing versus cleaning up a decently talented program with severe character issues.
And let's be honest, the national joke wasn't just the fight in the stands, it was things like Ravern's twitter rants, the weird 'he said, she said' between him and Phil Turner, the Renardo recruitment, Dee Bost's 9 hour declaration and the subsequent 5 games in 5 days and the general adversarial (not supervisory) position he took against his players.
Ah, no. I'm beginning to think you may really believe that Stansbury and Ray are/were the only two options we have/had for basketball coach. dawgstudent said it best, even Stansbury's strongest supporter, Andy Katz, in the national media said that it was time for him to go.
Good point. Which makes me wonder why MSU fans keep bringing up something that the average college basketball fan forgot in about 15 minutes.
you said exactly the truth. we were low hanging fruit. That didn't mean we were what was being 'written about' though. And, just because the media needs to write a story doesn't mean that a program MUST ACT on that article or articles... THAT IS MY POINT.
Did we need a reboot? Hell yeah, we did. We needed a reboot in 1999/2000. We had a super cancerous team with Robert Jackson/Tyrus Boswell and others. Stansbury completely rebooted and went out and got the team right back on track to then make the run that everyone loves him for. That 99/00 team was ten times more of a 'dumpster fire'. We were 14-16 and out of it.
This is what frustrated me more than anything. RS had already proven he could right the ship. What we should have done was give him a season to fix it. If he does, the Andy Katz of the world would have sopped that up and loved it. (as DS said, Katz loved RS). If he didn't right the ship, the fanbase wouldn't have been so divided.
We jumped the gun for either the press being bad or some fans bitching. We should have been a better program than to bend to the outside forces like that.
Did we need a reboot? Hell yeah, we did. We needed a reboot in 1999/2000. We had a super cancerous team with Robert Jackson/Tyrus Boswell and others. Stansbury completely rebooted and went out and got the team right back on track to then make the run that everyone loves him for. That 99/00 team was ten times more of a 'dumpster fire'. We were 14-16 and out of it.
This is what frustrated me more than anything. RS had already proven he could right the ship. What we should have done was give him a season to fix it. If he does, the Andy Katz of the world would have sopped that up and loved it. (as DS said, Katz loved RS). If he didn't right the ship, the fanbase wouldn't have been so divided.
We jumped the gun for either the press being bad or some fans bitching. We should have been a better program than to bend to the outside forces like that.
See, you cite Katz... But, even in Katz' words, he seems to advise caution: "A new voice was probably needed in Starkville. But this job will get increasingly difficult with the additions of Missouri and Texas A&M in the SEC, two schools that can affect recruiting adversely for Mississippi State."
Which is what most of us MSU bball fans that realized what we were getting into when we went another route from RS...
http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/53981/3-point-shot-playoffs-in-the-ivy
Which is what most of us MSU bball fans that realized what we were getting into when we went another route from RS...
http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/53981/3-point-shot-playoffs-in-the-ivy
I don't agree with much of anything in that post, but I'll leave it at that. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions.
There's nothing in that statement that even begins to imply that Stansbury shouldn't have been let go. As for what we were getting ourselves into, if you want to go back and check posts from Stansbury's last couple of years, I repeatedly said that our next couch would not match Stansbury's overall record at MSU and that it was going to be more difficult than a few of the more vocal ones thought it was going to be.
Latest
-
01
Maroon and White Basketball
Xavier 81-63 Mississippi State: Distance shooting hurts Bulldogs in Greenbrier defeat
-
02
Maroon and White Football
Kickoff Time Change: Mississippi State vs. Auburn
-
03
Maroon and White Football
Mississippi State Keys to Victory vs. Auburn
-
04
Rivals Basketball Recruiting
4-star center Chris Brown commits to Mississippi State
-
05
Maroon and White Football
Mississippi State Week 11 Preview: Auburn Q and A