So how much did Howland and staff earn and how much did State make off of him?
- Thread starter harrybollocks
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He took us from a pretty low point in the program to having expectations. Never could be consistently good.
I suspect the Howland era will be remembered pretty indifferently. No one is lining up to see him return to the Hump, but also nobody gets pissed when his name is mentioned.
i agree. The best you can say is he led us out of the wilderness of being a total cellar dweller but that's about all. Never really accomplished much though other than a couple of decent NIT runs for whatever that's worth. I personally was just surprised that a coach of his stature turned out to be so inflexible in his coaching style. No matter the opponent or game situation he was always half court man to man defense and that never changed. Also, his offense never had a clue how to attack a zone and that never changed (maybe because they never saw it in practice?). We were usually always outcoached down the stretch and that is why Howland's teams won so few close games against quality teams. He was an above average recruiter though and that helped a lot to make us competitive for the most part.
I think we paid him lower quintile of the league and got middle of the league results? Not sure how that translates into actual ROI, but I think Howland was a solid, not good hire. And honestly at the time, getting a solid hire to come in and take over after Rick Ray should probably be seen as a good result.
Why should we have paid him any differently? He was out of work when we hired him and as far as I know nobody was making any attempts to take him away from us. Had he accomplished more I'm sure we would have moved up his pay significantly.
Not with the abysmal attendance at home games.
Howland brought MSU out of the ashes post-RR. Sure, the team did not perform as expected, especially this season, but 'that's basketball' (for the baseball fans).
Having a sweet 16 roster (on paper) and not even making the tourny really hurts. Was hoping Ben would go out with a bang, but Tolu being MIA for most of the season, hard to get consistency. Really disappointed in the lack of three (3) pointers this season too. When the team woke up and played hard (defense), they showed what they were capable of doing. Taking UK to OT at Rupp is just another case of "would of/could of/should of" for MSU men's basketball.
Howland brought MSU out of the ashes post-RR. Sure, the team did not perform as expected, especially this season, but 'that's basketball' (for the baseball fans).
Having a sweet 16 roster (on paper) and not even making the tourny really hurts. Was hoping Ben would go out with a bang, but Tolu being MIA for most of the season, hard to get consistency. Really disappointed in the lack of three (3) pointers this season too. When the team woke up and played hard (defense), they showed what they were capable of doing. Taking UK to OT at Rupp is just another case of "would of/could of/should of" for MSU men's basketball.
Probably nobody but seemed you were sort of comparing his results to his pay like maybe we shouldn't have expected more given what we were paying him. My thought is that had he been successful and energized the fanbase I have no doubt we would have bumped his pay up significantly. I think we would all prefer a successful coach who we have pay a lot versus a mediocre or worse coach who we can get by on the cheap.
We finished 12th in the SEC in Rick Ray’s last season and 10th in Howland’s last season, so based on that alone, it’s hard to say the program made a huge jump in the past 7 years.
That being said, I think lost in the Rick Ray years is how bad SEC men’s basketball was during that time. We weren’t just a bad team. We were a bad team in a bad league.
The SEC has improved over the past 10 years and we have improved with it, but not enough to move the needle or make any noise nationally. It seemed like the theme of Howland’s entire tenure here was a continuous sine wave of building up credibility and good wins followed by a dip of inexplicable losses and/or lack of effort.
I think we probably got our money’s worth in the end. We went from being an automatic win for 90% of the league to being a team perennially on the verge of taking the next step.
That being said, I think lost in the Rick Ray years is how bad SEC men’s basketball was during that time. We weren’t just a bad team. We were a bad team in a bad league.
The SEC has improved over the past 10 years and we have improved with it, but not enough to move the needle or make any noise nationally. It seemed like the theme of Howland’s entire tenure here was a continuous sine wave of building up credibility and good wins followed by a dip of inexplicable losses and/or lack of effort.
I think we probably got our money’s worth in the end. We went from being an automatic win for 90% of the league to being a team perennially on the verge of taking the next step.
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