Part 1: Mississippi State head coach Chris Jans updates basketball offseason

It’s been an intriguing offseason for Mississippi State head coach Chris Jans and his staff. Coming off the program’s second straight NCAA Tournament appearance, the Bulldogs had a lot of holes to fill on the roster and a lot of proven leadership to replace.

On Tuesday, Jans and company began preparations for his third season in Starkville and did so with a lot of new faces, whether from the Class of 2024 or the transfer portal. Then on Wednesday, Jans met with the media to discuss his program and here’s Part 1 of that interview:

Q: Are all of the newcomers here for the first summer term?
Jans: We still have a couple of guys that have personal conflicts that didn’t allow them to be here the first day. But they are trickling in and I expect them to be here by the end of the week. So I expect us to be fine that way.

Q: All but one of your transfers came from a P6 league. Was that the mindset going into transfer season or just the way it worked out?
Jans: In terms of our approach to spring recruiting, particularly the portal, we didn’t have thoughts that ‘hey, we’re only going to sign or recruit guys that had experience at that level’. Certainly, it weighs in when you are trying to make decisions of who you are going after. I think it is a little bit easier at times to evaluate those prospects because of the obvious and who they are playing against and the competition level. You don’t have to think about that quite as much so maybe it makes it a little bit easier that way.

But I know the confidence level, when you sign someone at that level, is higher that it will translate to your particular program.

Q: Your thoughts on Josh Hubbard and your hopes for his offseason?
Jans: I think a smile broke out on my face when you brought his name up. It’s fun to talk about Josh. When you think about it, we haven’t been on the floor with our guys a week before finals. So you are talking the end of April to yesterday. So what they’ve done from the end of April to June 4th, that’s quite a few days. Certainly, every coach in America gives them an exit speech to stay in your game, keep working. Some take it to heart, some don’t.

I am 100% confident, even though I don’t know because I am not there with him, Josh has continued to work on his game, strengthen his weaknesses, spend time like he has the majority of his life trying to prepare himself for the season and having that mentality. For me, the jump I want him to make is more from a leadership capacity. Josh has respect in the locker room and you can tell just by watching how his teammates treat him, communicate with him.

Whether it’s his coaches every day or media folks that watch us play or fans, if you are paying attention he has respect from his teammates. I thought it was pretty remarkable how he came in as a true freshman and had the year he had, individually, and the impact he had. But he did it in a way where the team put their arms around him and accepted him. He did it with such modesty and such humbleness, and that’s why it worked the way it did.

But going forward, for us to be as good as we all want to be, the ask for him is going to be more from a verbal leadership role than an example leadership all the time. He’s going to have to find his voice even more. In this day and age, it is hard to do. The guys are more politically correct with one another and it’s cool because they get along well. There’s not as many issues when it comes to competitive things as it used to be.

But you get guys to step up a bit and he’s the perfect candidate with his stature on the team, with his game and his work ethic. We’ve already had some talks about it and we’re going to have more as we get deeper into preparing for the season.

Q: What is the challenge to get all of those new guys to work together with the returnees?
Jans: It’s not a challenge on June 5th. That’s probably a question better served when we get to the middle of November and games start unfolding. I’ve been doing this long enough to know, good or bad, a lot of things are going to happen between now and then. I am not concerned about that at all.

Everybody’s eyes are wide open when they are going through recruiting for their individual futures. We are very transparent with our guys in the process, as well. It is not like we are trying to hide anything. We share exactly what our roster looks like at that particular point and time. So everybody understands if you want to win you got to have other good players around you. Everybody wants to win and everybody wants to play. So finding guys that want to join forces in this day and age, knowing there is competition around them, can be a challenge at times.

But we feel really good right now and most coaches do at this point of the summer of where we are at and the types of guys we have on our practice floor and in our locker room. But there’s a lot, obviously, in time where things will happen and all of that will work out.

Q: How do you go about trying to establish expectations and culture when there are so many new pieces?
Jans: Yeah it is definitely different this year. Yesterday was our first day on the floor and that was the day we chose for our eight weeks to work on our guys with the NCAA limitations. We used to talk about the night before our first official practice being like the night before Christmas. But to be honest with you, two nights ago was that night because now, you can practice so much more now leading up to that first official practice that you know what you got. So now with access to them in the summer, getting them on the floor for the first time as their coach and you are Bulldogs and here’s our team, it’s exciting to get out there to see how they move in person and to watch them go through the drills we are teaching them.

So it’s a lot different. Like you mentioned, the year before we had more main guys. We’ve got plenty of guys returning this year but not as many starters or full-rotation guys as we did a year ago. So we have more new players that are going to be vying for those roles. It exciting that way to, if you will, unwrap gifts and see what they are all about.

Q: Last year marked the first time for this program to go to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments in a long time. Did you see that pay dividends on the recruiting trail?
Jans: I think you are better served to ask the players that joined our program to get an honest answer. But from my perspective and my staff’s perspective, I would answer yes. College athletics is obviously changing and evolving as we speak. Since I’ve arrived there’s been a lot of change and there’s going to be even more change in the next 18 months. So it’s interesting times that way.

But the thing, in my opinion, that always stays the same for the majority of the players is they want to win. They want to be in a winning program. They understand the feeling and most of them have been in some sort of winning program at some point of their career. I don’t care if it was junior high, high school or whatever the case may be. So when you can have that rather than selling a vision of what we are going to be and we are going to win.

It is much easier to have the factual evidence and the recent history of going to the NCAA Tournament and having a run where we almost had a chance to play for an SEC Tournament championship. Especially when it’s not your first year. If you are taking over a program that may have had some tough times, maybe you get some kind of pass that way and you can sell that vision and use your recent history to try to get them to join your program.

But once you’ve been in a program for a couple of years, it is hard to sell that as much as when you do it. We are fortunate that way and hopefully, that will continue to attract players to join us.

Q: You recently signed an extension at Mississippi State. What’s it like to have that kind of support from the athletic director?
Jans: I think they are going to expect us win more (laughing). But in all seriousness, it feels great to have the support from Dr. (Mark) Keenum, the powers to be and certainly athletic director Zac Selmon, had a lot to do with it. We are very appreciative and excited to be here and to continue to build upon on what we started.

You look back to when we got here, that’s what we said we were going to do. We were going to make the NCAA Tournament, we were going to build teams each and every year with the goal of being a perennial NCAA Tournament at-large program. Fortunately, we were able to do that and certainly, we are not satisfied. The early exits are not the plan. We raised our goals last year as a program for the first time for me in any program I’ve ever been in as a head coach in terms of what the end goal was for our team. We fell short of that.

We will continue to raise those goals that we have and that we basically keep to ourselves in our locker room. But it definitely helps with recruiting and with staff. I am more than excited that (the staff) gets more reassurance and stability. I just think it helps the program overall when things like that happen.