LOCKED - He's Done.

[Indndawg]

Losing to Mississippi @ the Hump is as bad as losing to Vandy or UK in football. Many fans live for game vs Mississippi and losing this one basically means lets just roll in the balls and hang up the unis.

I've been done w/RR since early on because he's just not an adequate SEC coach, maybe a good mid-major assistant coach.

I doubt if Strick has the kahonies to oversee his dismissal but MSU pres, I blv, does. Pressure needs to be brought on Dr. Keenum to get this program cleaned up and an SEC-worthy coach installed.
Replacing one Dumpster Fire w/another one is unacceptable even in the SWAC

 

[msstate7]

Should we fire him today or let the season play out?

I think ray should get his 4th year. Let him sink or swim with his core group of players (ware, sword, and fred).

Our offense is miserable at times. If you pay attention though, we play with pretty much everyone while ready is running the point. When we sub bloodman, you can go ahead and expect to lose ground. It's every game. Last night we were +10 to start the game. We subbed bloodman and the lead fell to 2 before we put ready back in. Once ready was back in, we pushed the lead back to 5. When bloodman is in the game, we can only score in 2 ways: transition or a 3 ball.

Ray isn't telling our guys to stand around the 3 point line and pass the ball. Our problem is we only have 2 players that can drive the ball in ready and sword. We have help on the way in that regard. Tookie and weatherspoon are drivers/slashers. Both can play the point. Both are scorers. Having these 2 over bloodman is gonna make a huge difference imo. Weatherspoon is also a top 100 player. He'll be the only 1 we have.

I'm hoping the upgrade in talent at the guard position will fix 2 of our biggest offensive problems: TO's and lack of driving ability.

Hopefully Ray can get us to postseason play next season so he can get his best recruiting class in here. Simonds and hicks are legit.

 

[Bulldogg31]

He will be back next year, no doubt about it. Team has shown improvement, even though the wins aren't coming.
Plenty of improved areas for Stricklin to reference when defending the decision to keep Ray another year, and that's really all he needs.

 

[msstate7]

He will be back next year, no doubt about it. Team has shown improvement, even though the wins aren't coming.
Plenty of improved areas for Stricklin to reference when defending the decision to keep Ray another year, and that's really all he needs.

I agree.

Of our 8 sec losses, we lost 5 of them by 6 points or less. In those 5 games, we held a 2nd half lead. We're a player or 2 away. Weatherspoon can be that player imo

 

[BulldogBlitz]

he should be fired today, not even given a chance to pack. he should be told that the message boards dont like him, and want him gone. in fact, he should be fired over twitter just for effect....and to provide more fodder for us.

 

[121Josey]

Ray should be allowed to finish out the CALENDAR year. He should be told that his walking papers have been prepared. He's got until SEC play starts to show that he can put a good product on the court.

If he doesn't like it, he knows where the door is.

They definitely need to hire an assistant who can teach offensive fundamentals. He'd be a nice interim coach too.

 

[ERDawg22]

Ray should be allowed to finish out the CALENDAR year. He should be told that his walking papers have been prepared. He's got until SEC play starts to show that he can put a good product on the court.

If he doesn't like it, he knows where the door is.

They definitely need to hire an assistant who can teach offensive fundamentals. He'd be a nice interim coach too.

this is I actually agree with. Yes there has been improvement but these guys still have a very long way to go. It's year 3 and we aren't even back to an average/mediocre team yet. That says enough right there. Everyone said it was put up or shut up time at the beginning of the season. Well... Is a losing season enough for you? I hope Scott has been making some calls to agents. This time has to be a splash no doubt hire. He can't afford to pull another Ray out of his hat.

 

[GhostOfJackie]

Should we fire him today or let the season play out?

I think ray should get his 4th year. Let him sink or swim with his core group of players (ware, sword, and fred).

Our offense is miserable at times. If you pay attention though, we play with pretty much everyone while ready is running the point. When we sub bloodman, you can go ahead and expect to lose ground. It's every game. Last night we were +10 to start the game. We subbed bloodman and the lead fell to 2 before we put ready back in. Once ready was back in, we pushed the lead back to 5. When bloodman is in the game, we can only score in 2 ways: transition or a 3 ball.

Ray isn't telling our guys to stand around the 3 point line and pass the ball. Our problem is we only have 2 players that can drive the ball in ready and sword. We have help on the way in that regard. Tookie and weatherspoon are drivers/slashers. Both can play the point. Both are scorers. Having these 2 over bloodman is gonna make a huge difference imo. Weatherspoon is also a top 100 player. He'll be the only 1 we have.

I'm hoping the upgrade in talent at the guard position will fix 2 of our biggest offensive problems: TO's and lack of driving ability.

Hopefully Ray can get us to postseason play next season so he can get his best recruiting class in here. Simonds and hicks are legit.

These guys will be 4 year starters in the SEC. Give or take a few games. No reason we should not at least be an NIT team next year.

 

[patdog]

So you would bring him back next year, only to fire him 10 games into the season? That's ridiculous. Either you fire him in March or you give him another year.

 

[msstate7]

These guys will be 4 year starters in the SEC. Give or take a few games. No reason we should not at least be an NIT team next year.

You're right. No excuses.

 

[121Josey]

So you would bring him back next year, only to fire him 10 games into the season? That's ridiculous. Either you fire him in March or you give him another year.

He shouldn't have survived Upstate. So yes I would.

Speaking of ridiculous, have you seen MSU basketball this year? But the guys play hard. Crxxm.

 

[kired]

You gotta let the season play out. We can realistically win 4 of the next 5. Three games are against teams as bad as us, and Arkansas is not great on the road. Most of their SEC road wins are by very slim margins. If he gets to 15 wins (8 SEC wins) I would bring him back.

 

[olblue.sixpack]

Ray should be allowed to finish out the CALENDAR year. He should be told that his walking papers have been prepared. He's got until SEC play starts to show that he can put a good product on the court.

If he doesn't like it, he knows where the door is.

They definitely need to hire an assistant who can teach offensive fundamentals. He'd be a nice interim coach too.

Coaches that can teach fundamentals aren't the problem. They are a dime a dozen. The real catch is having players that can be developed.

 

[patdog]

He shouldn't have survived Upstate. So yes I would.

This makes no sense at all. You say he should have been fired last December, but you want to give him until NEXT December? Why wouldn't you go ahead and fire him now, or at the end of THIS season?

 

[121Josey]

This makes no sense at all. You say he should have been fired last December, but you want to give him until NEXT December? Why wouldn't you go ahead and fire him now, or at the end of THIS season?

This makes no sense at all. I am not the AD. Or am I?**

I could really care less at the moment. RR has shown that he is not the answer. The AD isn't going to fire him in Year 3. My point is that he needs to know this summer that his job is on the line.

He shouldn't be on the bench at any point in 2016. January is a better time to start courting a potential replacement than March-April, is it not?

 

[YardBarker]

Give him his fourth year (unless he loses out) bc I have seen improvement but it's NCAA or bust next year.

 

[BiscuitEater]

Coaching ability ...

Should we fire him today or let the season play out?

I think ray should get his 4th year. Let him sink or swim with his core group of players (ware, sword, and fred).

Our offense is miserable at times. If you pay attention though, we play with pretty much everyone while ready is running the point. When we sub bloodman, you can go ahead and expect to lose ground. It's every game. Last night we were +10 to start the game. We subbed bloodman and the lead fell to 2 before we put ready back in. Once ready was back in, we pushed the lead back to 5. When bloodman is in the game, we can only score in 2 ways: transition or a 3 ball.

Ray isn't telling our guys to stand around the 3 point line and pass the ball. Our problem is we only have 2 players that can drive the ball in ready and sword. We have help on the way in that regard. Tookie and weatherspoon are drivers/slashers. Both can play the point. Both are scorers. Having these 2 over bloodman is gonna make a huge difference imo. Weatherspoon is also a top 100 player. He'll be the only 1 we have.

I'm hoping the upgrade in talent at the guard position will fix 2 of our biggest offensive problems: TO's and lack of driving ability.

Hopefully Ray can get us to postseason play next season so he can get his best recruiting class in here. Simonds and hicks are legit.

- Ray needs to be allowed to finish this year and ONLY this year.
- We have zero offense beyond passing the ball around the perimeter 'hoping' someone can penetrate or get an open shot. Zero screens, zero 'back door cuts,' zero motion.
- Agree with your observations on Bloodman. Ray 'insists' on playing him way too much. Last night, Bloodman played 15 minutes and Ready played 25. Coach 34 on ED says Ready has to rest ... yet, Stefan Moody didn't look winded playing 36 minutes and shooting 8 of 12 from behind the arc.
- In his third year, with the same players, Ray still has not taught them a single play to get the ball in-bounds. No screens, no stacks, no options.

 

[TwoDawgs]

A big question is does Stricklin regard this as "Year One" for Ray? Ray has recently said many times that this is really "Year One" for him because of the dumpster fire he walked into. If Stricklin is on board with the "Year One" assessment no way he gets rid of Ray.

 

[NCDawg.sixpack]

Why don't we do like our neighbors to the North and give Horatio some kind of job at State. I believe if we could possibly get Newman, he could be the answer to a lot of Ray's problems.

 

[121Josey]

Coaches that can teach fundamentals aren't the problem. They are a dime a dozen. The real catch is having players that can be developed.

You have it backwards my friend. Or either I don't know what you mean by "having players that can be developed".

 

[121Josey]

A big question is does Stricklin regard this as "Year One" for Ray? Ray has recently said many times that this is really "Year One" for him because of the dumpster fire he walked into. If Stricklin is on board with the "Year One" assessment no way he gets rid of Ray.

"This is the worse economic recession since the great depression." Thanks Bush. When are we going to elect a president to fix the problem?

RR was hired to fix the basketball dumpster fire problem. But after three years, it is still somebody else's fault. That doesn't cut it. His players have had max PT and experience. They should be at least able to win home games and put butts in the stands. No more excuses.

 

[Bulldogg31]

Why don't we do like our neighbors to the North and give Horatio some kind of job at State. I believe if we could possibly get Newman, he could be the answer to a lot of Ray's problems.

It's entirely possible that Mr. Webster is already gainfully employed and does not feel the need to change careers so his NBA-bound son can play 1 year of college basketball.

But I could be wrong.

 

[AHSDawg]

"Improvement" = ranking 294th in NCAA in offense? Isn't that the stat I saw last night? That is absolutely unacceptable. We had MULTIPLE possessions in the second half last night where the ball LITERALLY NEVER GOT INSIDE THE 3 POINT LINE... And, I don't mean that we threw the ball around and then chucked up a heave of a 3 at the buzzer. No, we ran the clock all the way down by passing around the 3 point line until finally we threw the ball away. We are abysmal. This is not a product that should be being put forth by an SEC program.

The fact is this. When we are hitting everything we throw up, we almost look like a normal basketball team. We don't even look great then. The other 80% of the time, we look like a SWAC team in baseball from the mid 90s. The games where we would play our freshmen and win 28-1. To find positives in this mess, you REALLY have to talk yourself into absurd comments.

 

[thf24]

My thoughts exactly. Pretty sure I saw somewhere that he's a CPA. I think it's a good possibility he'd consider a job offer an affront, given the circumstances, and reduce our chances of getting Malik even further.

 

[olblue.sixpack]

You have it backwards my friend. Or either I don't know what you mean by "having players that can be developed".

I'm pretty sure you don't know what I mean.

 

[Philly Dawg]

I don't expect him to be fired, but do wonder at the suggestion that the improvement shown is sufficient to justify keeping him. Frankly, I think they were always going to give him four years, short of probation or something that bad.

If you take a group of freshmen, and then advance them along to sophomores, and then juniors, is a losing record overall and in the SEC sufficient?

 

[ShrubDog]

Come on man we are not even SWACish.

 

[121Josey]

How about you help me out then? Is it talent or attitude?

 

[dawgstudent]

I think he's saying the culture of AAU basketball lends itself to players thinking they are already developed. You have to recruit the right player or just bring in someone with an immense amount of talent.

 

[SorryDog]

This year's improvement: Craig Sword got healthy.
That is all.

 

[AHSDawg]

No one will ever make me understand how you can be this bad on offense. Most teams that know that they are awful will try to speed up the game to play to their strengths. If you are only going to make 30% of your shots, the rationale is usually "I need to take as many shots as I can". Maybe press or do some other things to get away from how bad you are. But, we don't do any of that. We actually squeeze the ball and get fewer shots thus making our shots far more valuable to us... and we suck at making anything.

Of course, I know we aren't 'SWACish' but this whole 'we are improving' pandemic that is happening on this board is just retarded. We are AWFUL. We can sugarcoat it all we want to in that we may not be as awful as we have been in the past 2 years but we are still bottom 3 in a VERY weak conference.

 

[msstate7]

We're 5-8 in the sec. In 5 of our 8 losses, we've lost by 6 points or less. In those 5 games, we held a 2nd half lead.

We aren't good, but we're hardly as terrible as posters here are suggesting. We're a couple of good players away. Weatherspoon should be one. Hopefully tookie will upgrade the backup pg

 

[ShrubDog]

I am saying we are not good enough to be called SWACish.....

Like you said we cannot shoot the ball so we need to create scoring chances by doing multiple things. And those things are not happening. FT's could really help out in a game last night, drive etc. We dont have to be the best ball handlers to drive....just go.

 

[Seinfeld]

I don't know the answer to that and regardless of the situation that a basketball coach inherits, I've gone on record as saying that I'm not a fan of the 2-year reprieve at all. That said, if he was brought in with that kind of agreement, that's fine... but then his "Year 1" sure as hell better carry standard program expectations with it. i.e. NCAA tournament or bust

You don't get two years to dick around and then still only have minimal expectations like winning 15 games as a sign of progress. If that was indeed the agreement, then like I've said before, we've got problems outside of just Rick Ray

 

[msstate7]

I am saying we are not good enough to be called SWACish.....

Like you said we cannot shoot the ball so we need to create scoring chances by doing multiple things. And those things are not happening. FT's could really help out in a game last night, drive etc. We dont have to be the best ball handlers to drive....just go.

Just go huh? The just going is why fred, Daniels, and bloodman turn it over all the time. We have 2 decent ball handlers/drivers in ready and sword. Bloodman can create some in transition, but he's terrible in the halfcourt

 

[ShrubDog]

Yea you can drive from the elbow you know. Its not a perimeter to the lane sequence as some think. Flash and drive.

And if we cant do that cause we turn it over than we are 17'd both ways.

 

[AHSDawg]

Here is a newsflash. The SEC is not good. To say that we almost beat some bad SEC teams as a rationale that we are 'close' is just dumb.

Check out our offensive numbers. Anytime a power 5 conference ranks in the 290+ in 5 offensive categories, THEY ARE NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING GOOD.

 

[AHSDawg]

Also, 7 of our wins were by less than 8, 6 were by less than 6

So you cannot have it both ways and just get to count our close losses. We are a few plays away from being a whole lot worse than we are a few plays away from being better.

 

[BiscuitEater]

Sorry,

He will be back next year, no doubt about it. Team has shown improvement, even though the wins aren't coming.
Plenty of improved areas for Stricklin to reference when defending the decision to keep Ray another year, and that's really all he needs.

I would be willing to let the rest of this season play out but I just don't see any real improvement. To me, I just see Sly Croom coaching our basketball team. Sly went 3-8, 3-8, 3-9 ... and then he went 8-5. Even when he went 8-5, most 'knew' that he just wasn't what State needed to get to the next level.

Yes, there was improvement with Croom and yes, we have won 5 SEC games ... But is there really any REAL improvement? Most of these guys are in their third year and there is still NO REAL Offense.

If Ray gets a fourth year, I will support him 100%

 

[msstate7]

Here is a newsflash. The SEC is not good. To say that we almost beat some bad SEC teams as a rationale that we are 'close' is just dumb.

Check out our offensive numbers. Anytime a power 5 conference ranks in the 290+ in 5 offensive categories, THEY ARE NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING GOOD.

Well we play in the sec, so we should compare ourselves to our conference. I notice you left out defensive stats. What are they?

The conference is improved. It's almost like you guys in order to rip us some more have to rip the conference too. Kentucky played Louisville, Kansas, UNC, etc. Who were the teams that played them to ot or to within a basket? OM, lsu, and aTm (all ncaa teams)