STARKVILLE — When Mississippi State men’s basketball head coach Chris Jans arrived in 2022, he inherited a team he believed was good enough to make the tournament that year.
But for Jans, the target is no longer just making it to March Madness. Instead, it is figuring out how the Bulldogs can make deep runs in the dance.
“I don’t know any team that doesn’t have that goal, but it’s not the only one,” Jans said of the tournament to the Starkville Rotary Club during its Monday meeting at Hilton Garden Inn. “We definitely want more and we’re disappointed with early exits.”
Jans is 42-27 through two seasons with the Bulldogs. His teams qualified for the NCAA tournament in both seasons but failed to advance past its first game, losing to Pittsburgh in the 2023 First Four and Michigan State in the First round in 2024.
Jans and the Bulldogs want to build on that, as he expressed optimism in the Bulldogs program and the new team heading into the 2024-25 season. But in the modern age of college sports, the process of building that team has changed dramatically.
In 2018, the college transfer portal changed, with athletes gaining the ability to leave freely without having to sit out or lose eligibility. Then, in 2021, athletes gained the right to profit from their name, image and likeness.
When Rotarians asked about how NIL funding and the transfer portal have changed the game, Jans shared how each has affected his approach to team building.
“Experience and the market, but it changes like most things,” he said when asked how he evaluates a player’s NIL value. “You just learn on the fly.”
While competing financially with other schools is now a factor, Jans said he still values forming a connection with players and finding the right person – and athlete – to bring into the team.
“Those kinds of conversations are happening all the time,” he said. “At the end of the day, what it does, to me, is it narrows your focus, but in the end you get in a group of three or four schools and it’s the old school way. It’s about relationships. All the other things that always mattered, how their visit goes and any connections you may have to the kid, those still come into play.”
The Bulldogs have eight new arrivals through the transfer portal this season. With many key departures from last year’s group, Jans knew the identity of the team wouldn’t quite be the same.
Tolu Smith and D.J. Jeffries, two cornerstone players who offered strength on defense and attacking the basket, graduated in May. However, Jans expressed his confidence in returning players and their ability to elevate the team.
“We’ve got Josh Hubbard and Cam Matthews as our returnees and they want to win,” Jans said. “So we need to take advantage of it.”
Matthews, a senior, has been a key player for several years now. He fits the profile of previous Jans teams, a physical player on the boards who can guard and attack the paint.
Hubbard personifies the new direction the team is taking, a speedy and crafty ball-handler who can score from anywhere on the floor.
Jans called Hubbard “a special young man,” highlighting his show stopping ability on the floor as well as his leadership in the team. He went from the bench to the starting lineup as a true freshman with his prolific scoring, and his 35.5% three-point shooting made him stand out in a group that struggled shooting from distance. With a new emphasis on dynamic play, Hubbard will be at the center of what the Bulldogs want to do this season.
“We’re going to be able to score the ball better,” Jans said of this year’s group. “We’ve got better guard play, more guys who can shoot the basketball, who can create for themselves and one another.”
Hubbard and Matthews highlight the list of returning players that was a point of pride for Jans when discussing team building. In the current landscape of the portal and NIL, he said there has only been one player that left who the coaches wanted to return.
Limiting the turnover year to year and building on their core players is key to him, and it also reflects what he believes to be a positive community around the team and the school.
“What that should tell you is they like the experience in Starkville, Mississippi,” he said of the returning talent each year. “They like being a student at MSU because if they didn’t, or they didn’t like how we coached them, they would leave. Why wouldn’t they? The market is the market and the portal is where it’s at, and if they didn’t like being in this community they have every opportunity to go somewhere else and have a number of suitors, and they don’t.”
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