Keeping Stansbury

[Seinfeld]

This is not to rehash the tired question about whether we should’ve fired him or not because lord knows we’ve beaten that one to death.

I’m curious, though, as to whether y’all think we would have eventually ended up with the same result. That is, 1 NCAA tournament in 7 years, pitiful home crowds, and general disinterest in the program as a whole. Would much be different today if he was still here?

 

[tcdog70]

This is not to rehash the tired question about whether we should’ve fired him or not because lord knows we’ve beaten that one to death.

I’m curious, though, as to whether y’all think we would have eventually ended up with the same result. That is, 1 NCAA tournament in 7 years, pitiful home crowds, and general disinterest in the program as a whole. Would much be different today if he was still here?

Stans would have continued to be a top 5 SEC program--why not?

 

[engie]

It would not be worse. He'd have gotten basically all the bigtime players Howland has gotten and would have done just as much with them.

 

[notoriousD_O_G]

I think the on court product would be about the same as it is now but we wouldn't have had the rock bottom Rick Ray years. Fan support would be better because a large portion of our non-message board fan base still loves Stans

 

[patdog]

I think it would have been a lot like the Howland years. Probably a little better on court results, but more player discipline and transfer issues.

 

[Smoked Toag]

You have to look at would have been in 2013. Would Rodney Hood have stayed? What about the others? Because if not, Stanz is likely fired after that year anyway.

Stans and Howland are pretty similar, but I think Stans is little better about getting the most athleticism out of them, whereas Howland is slightly better about discipline. But those things come with costs, as Stans teams were often just plumb out of control, while Howland's look dull with little life.

 

[curseddawgs]

Honestly the better question is how different would the program be is Stans took the Clemson job in 2010

 

[ll Martain ll]

I vividly remember telling my friends towards the end of that season that if we fire Stans (the winningest coach in school history) that there would be a rebuild period of pain, because "who wants that rebuild job". I'm also not sure the University was ready to pull the trigger on the firing, because when Stans did step down they got turned down by pretty much everyone on their hire list and ended up with an unknown 2nd assistant from a football school. I personally was on board with letting Stans attempt to rebuild as it was the best shot to maintain momentum, but fully understood if the university wanted to move on.

I think the rebuild pain wouldn't have lasted as long since Stans was really good at recruiting. The 6 year rebuild would probably have been much shorter (similar to after the 04-05 season), but they'd still have been a perpetual bubble team like they were 2007-2012, and like they are today. So maybe another tournament bid or 2, but not much more.

The crowd thing was already starting before Stans left and was a direct result of the reseat money grab. Rick's Rowdies barely existed by his last year, and almost every student who was there for the actual rowdy days were long gone. I do wonder if Stans would have had more pull than Rick Ray to actually do something about it though. Hindsight...

 

[patdog]

Honestly the better question is how different would the program be is Stans took the Clemson job in 2010

THIS is the right question to ask. And the answer is it would have been better for everyone if he had taken that job. When you decide to leave a long-time job for a new challenge, there's reasons you made that decision. And they're not going away if you change your mind and stay.

 

[MSUDC11]

Rick’s downfall was inevitable. A rebuild was coming regardless after 2012, basically that whole team was leaving even if Rick had stayed. Even if we had given him another year or two, I can’t envision a scenario where he would have gotten control back and made us good again. He hasn’t really done that at WKU either, he has a worse winning percentage there than he had here.

 

[mstateglfr]

I dont think a lot would be different. We would have won more games during the Ray years, but I doubt we would have amounted to much during that time, based on who was leaving vs staying and coming in when Stans 'retired'.
So a handful of more wins that nobody would remember a few years later.

People are tired of watching the team compete for 90% of the game and then lose in the last 5-7min this season. It seems many forget we had the Stansbury Stall that would be implemented around the 10min mark when we were up by about 7 or more. That guy managed to turn more blowouts into close wins than any coach I can think of.

 

[DoggieDaddy13]

"The crowd thing was already starting before Stans left and was a direct result of the reseat money grab. Rick's Rowdies barely existed by his last year, and almost every student who was there for the actual rowdy days were long gone. I do wonder if Stans would have had more pull than Rick Ray to actually do something about it though. Hindsight..."

THE RESEATING MONEY GRAB by the University destroyed the great game experience we used to get at the Hump.

 

[dorndawg]

Stans wouldn't have lost no damn 11 games with that 18-19 team. But in fairness he still woulda lost to Liberty in the NCAAT. So really, not much would be different.

 

[johnson86-1]

This is not to rehash the tired question about whether we should’ve fired him or not because lord knows we’ve beaten that one to death.

I’m curious, though, as to whether y’all think we would have eventually ended up with the same result. That is, 1 NCAA tournament in 7 years, pitiful home crowds, and general disinterest in the program as a whole. Would much be different today if he was still here?

Ignoring that Stansbury would have been fired in a year or two anyway, we would have just continued Stans late season performance. Talent that should be in the tournament, performance that's just on the wrong side of the bubble, plus a dysfunctional lockerroom.

We weren't about to have a collapse with Stansbury. He was still recruiting pretty good talent with character issues. But it definitely would have been a step down from Bost and Moultrie for a year and probably two, so again, Stansbury probably would have been fired in another year or two regardless. Even though CHicken, Ware, and Fred seemed to be pretty good character guys, not sure how they or the team would have fared keeping some of the problem children, so not even being on the bubble along with more embarrassments would have probably sealed Stansbury's fate.

 

[Go Budaw]

It would not be worse. He'd have gotten basically all the bigtime players Howland has gotten and would have done just as much with them.

The team he had in 2012 that we bombed with down the stretch was maybe the most talented squad we ever put on the floor at MSU. It was certainly the most talented team that Stansbury ever had….two 1st round NBA draft picks, another guy who was a McDonald’s AA, and an all-SEC caliber player in Dee Bost. It was way more talented than any team Howland has had here. The two 1st round picks he had that year were the only 2 he ever had for his entire MSU tenure. All that, and we were still an NIT 4-seed. The reason is because the culture was shot to hell and the off the court **** that people actually knew about was only the tip of the iceberg. Once it gets that bad….there’s no coming back. Him hanging on another 7 years would have turned our program into the Vandy football of SEC basketball….it’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

 

[Go Budaw]

Stans wouldn't have lost no damn 11 games with that 18-19 team. But in fairness he still woulda lost to Liberty in the NCAAT. So really, not much would be different.

He lost 12 games with the 2011-2012 team, which was more talented than that 2018-2019 team.

 

[irondawg007]

How about this question… if Stansbury had dropped his focus on Renardo Sidney early in the process, would he had remained the coach later? I say yes. Yes, our program was declining and sometimes schools our size face that challenge. Stansbury’s fire was lit when he got the opportunity at Western Kentucky, so a change of scenery was good for him. But the passion of this program drastically changed losing the Stansbury family and the reseating of the Hump. We’ve never rebounded since.

Our mens basketball program since he left has struggled to have the emotional pull to fans, alum and students. Vic brought that emotional pull back in the women’s program — or should I say created it from scratch for the women’s program. It’s gonna take the right coach to help us get that back. And our current AD situation is hurting us from a marketing perspective. Baseball and football are all that matters to him it seems.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

Hood was gone regardless and Stans left Ray a crap roster. His last couple of years before he “retired” he appeared to be spending more time with Meo, Issac, Jehoshaphat, Ezekiel and Malachi than crootin. The crap roster made the job very unappealing at the time and there was no Portal. Also truth or not, word was NCAA was doing some snooping around Jackson and Starkville.

 

[GTAdawg]

This is rehashing. Next.

 

[Mr. Cook]

The crowd thing was already starting before Stans left and was a direct result of the reseat money grab. Rick's Rowdies barely existed by his last year, and almost every student who was there for the actual rowdy days were long gone...[omitted]...... Hindsight...

HUGE statement you make. This is part of the root problem. Hindsight should be converted to having better foresight.

Student involvment is one reason why you have "paying cutomers" and winning keeps all of that coming through the doors. HOWEVER.... what is consistently missed time and time again is overuse of the "cut and paste" methodology to copy "what others have done." The "moneygrabbing" is a part of that.

If you have a winning porgram, you can "moneygrab" --- it is called "supply and demand"

OUR PROBLEM at MSU is that we identify and implement things from winning programs and try to do them here. Flip the script on MSU baseball: Imagine coming to MSU from a university of less baseball history, tradition, and repute -- how do you explain to a visitor how the MSU baseball program arrived to where it did in 2021? It's a narrative built on tradition and years of building. We didn't just build a damn stadium, charge higher prices, and win a Natty. It just doesn't work like that.

But MSU will try to do crap like this in other sports --and we never learn the lesson. In some ways, winning removes odor, but it doesn't always remove the source of that odor. And that is lesson that doesn't seem to be ever learned at MSU. Blame players, blame coaches, blame fans, blame administrators, blame who you want -- the fault is many of our athletic programs are not built with the same core values that we built baseball. There's you're tradition.

 

[maroonmania]

Just being honest, Stansbury has never been as successful as a HC, in either his last couple of years at MSU or his WKU stint, since Robert Kirby left his staff. Apparently Kirby was the disciplinarian at MSU while he was here with Stans because from the time he left Stans totally lost control of the program. And he really hasn't done as well at WKU as I thought he would.

 

[dorndawg]

He lost 12 games with the 2011-2012 team, which was more talented than that 2018-2019 team.

True

 

[mstateglfr]

We weren't about to have a collapse with Stansbury. He was still recruiting pretty good talent with character issues. But it definitely would have been a step down from Bost and Moultrie for a year and probably two, so again, Stansbury probably would have been fired in another year or two regardless. Even though CHicken, Ware, and Fred seemed to be pretty good character guys, not sure how they or the team would have fared keeping some of the problem children, so not even being on the bubble along with more embarrassments would have probably sealed Stansbury's fate.

Had Stansbury stayed, he would have still been without Bost, Moultrie, Hood, and Sidney. MSU would have been basically starting over with the roster since the starting 5 from the previous season and more were all gone. Jalen Steele and Wendell Lewis were our best returning players. Seruiously- they were the best returning players. We had like 13ppg returning from the year prior(17.3% of scoring returned). It was a total gutting.
Stansbury wasnt still recruiting pretty good talent- he had Sword, Ware, and Flat top Fred coming in. Those 3 developed into decent SEC players, but hardly on the level of players from the prior season or talent that Howland has pulled in.

 

[Reunion Dog]

Rodney Hood wasn’t going anywhere if Stans stayed. If he hadn’t of hurt his knee in that Kentucky….. man that killed us. Then he goes to Duke and gets named Team Captain his 1st year. And also started in the NBA.

The male cheerleader’s father in law (Bailey Howell) wanted Rick gone… so he was gone.

And we have payed the price ever since that day.

When your team is getting invited to play in the Bahamas and the Hawaii…. That means folks think you are.

Whomever is the new coach… I wish he would bring back .’Zimmerman for recruiting or Butch Pierre. Hell Shady Brady could turn this thing around.

Next you see the almighty Bailey Howell at a game…. Just up to him and thank him for getting our best winning percentage coach fired.

 

[MSUDC11]

Rodney Hood wasn’t going anywhere if Stans stayed. If he hadn’t of hurt his knee in that Kentucky….. man that killed us. Then he goes to Duke and gets named Team Captain his 1st year. And also started in the NBA.

The male cheerleader’s father in law (Bailey Howell) wanted Rick gone… so he was gone.

And we have payed the price ever since that day.

When your team is getting invited to play in the Bahamas and the Hawaii…. That means folks think you are.

Whomever is the new coach… I wish he would bring back .’Zimmerman for recruiting or Butch Pierre. Hell Shady Brady could turn this thing around.

Next you see the almighty Bailey Howell at a game…. Just up to him and thank him for getting our best winning percentage coach fired.

The collapse was already underway when Hood got hurt. We had lost three in a row to bad teams going into that UK game. And Hood only missed a game or two anyway.

I don’t believe at all that Hood stays if we keep Stans, given Rick’s track record of good players transferring away from him. Even if he had stayed, I don’t think he would have been enough to save Rick for more than another year or two.

 

[ArcherSPS]

Howland has had teams play in those non-con tourneys too. We’re at Stans’ later years now, we just don’t have the off the court issues and toxic image to non-State folks. Which was big reason why we ended up with Rick Ray.

 

[hailstate19]

Bring Stan’s back home