Chris Jans explains how last season's success has impacted message to fans

The Mississippi State Bulldogs men’s basketball team enjoyed a successful 2022-2023 campaign in head coach Chris Jans’s first year. Jans will be looking to build off of last season’s success heading into the offseason and preparing for the team’s fall camps.

And during a recent media availability, the Bulldogs’ headman explains how his success in year one has translated over so far this offseason with future recruits, recruits, and fans.

“Well, it’s part of our sell, to be honest with you. We talked to a lot of recruits and potential recruits about a year ago; at this time, when we arrived, we were new,” said Jans. “I had no experience in the Power-5, and most of my staff didn’t either. And we were selling them a dream, if you will; a vision that we had for what we could do at Mississippi State, and we weren’t gonna wait. We didn’t have a two or three-year plan. It was about our first season, and our goal was to make the tournament. Now, after, you know, accomplishing that goal and doing what we did, we’re just like, hey, we did what we said.”

Mississippi State made its first appearance in the men’s basketball championship tournament since the 2018-2019 season. Prior to that, the Bulldogs fell short of qualifying for the men’s tournament earning handful of NIT invitations instead.

Last year the Bulldogs finished the season 21-13 making a trip to the Men’s NCAA Championship Tournament, where they faced off in a battle of 11-seeds against Pittsburgh.

With Jans’ success in year one, it has signaled to those following the program and interested in joining it that the Mississippi State headman is a man of his word.

“We say what we do around here, and we feel like we’re in a better position now than we were a year ago. Things can change hourly and daily. But in terms of our fans, that’s kind of what we sold our guys; it was kind of flat and dormant when we walked out there the first few games of the season. I’m not going to lie to you, I was a little disappointed, but I didn’t know exactly what to expect either. But (I) was so pleasantly surprised by the continued addition of people in The Hump as the season unfolded. Students were unbelievable, especially after the first couple of weeks, and they kept growing and growing. And then we had some sellouts.”

Mississippi State did not have the ending to the year they wanted last season, both in the SEC championship tournament and the men’s NCAA championship tournament. In their final game of the SEC tournament, the Bulldogs fell hard to the eventual conference champions Alabama 72-49.

And in the championship tournament, Mississippi State suffered a heartbreaking loss to Pittsburgh 60-59. Still, the future is bright for the Bulldogs and Jans, which is precisely his selling point when discussing his vision for the program.

“What we’re selling everybody on is we’re going to unfurl a chapter in the Mississippi State history books with adding our year to the banner of appearances in the tournament,” said Jans. “We’re gonna open a $50 million renovation of The Hump. There’s a lot of good things that are going on. We’ve established ourselves now; people are excited about Bulldog basketball, (and) our community has proven to be excited about our style of play, at least from the comments that I’m receiving.

“Hopefully, we’ll have better crowds in the fall, and hopefully, people are excited about next season. Obviously, a lot of people will come up to me and tell me: I can’t wait for next year.”