Mississippi State improving under Rick Ray
February 7, 2014
By Nick Gray
UK’s drop in basketball success last season was well documented. But its decline was not as steep as another SEC team’s.
Mississippi State University posted five 20-win seasons with former head coach Rick Stansbury from 2007-12 and produced a top-25 recruiting class before his final season.
But when Stansbury retired, all five starters and four other letter-winners graduated or left the program before the beginning of the next season.
Head coach Rick Ray came to Starkville, Miss., knowing that the program had neither the talent nor the numbers to compete immediately with the best teams in the SEC. Last season was the first since 1986-87 in which the Bulldogs (10-22, 4-14 SEC) did not earn more than 10 victories.
Through a season and a half of play, both Mississippi State’s record and roster are in much better shape for the short term and the long term, Ray said.
“We’re not Kentucky. We’re not going to be able to get five-star guys,” Ray said. “We need to be developing our program so when these (younger) guys become sophomores and juniors, now you have a good, solid veteran ball club that is hard to compete against.”
Numbers were the biggest problem for Ray last season. By the time the Bulldogs reached March, eight players were left on the roster as injuries trimmed a team already hurt by the prior offseason’s mass exodus.
Mississippi State got healthier and added three freshmen over the offseason, and Ray said he was happy with the improvement in the non conference slate. After losing their conference opener at UK, the Bulldogs won three of their next four games in the SEC.
Now Ray’s team has hit a wall, losing four straight games. Despite the recent struggles, the Bulldogs’ head coach said his goal is to top last year’s 4-14 SEC record.
“If anyone looked at our program and watched our guys individually, I don’t think there’s anybody who can say we haven’t improved individually,” Ray said. “I don’t think we can say we are at a place where we want to be until we have a better record than last year in conference.”
Mississippi State has three more commitments in the next class, adding to a roster that has a pair of sophomores (guard Craig Sword and forward Gavin Ware) who average more than 10 points per game. The success does not match that of the University of Florida or UK, but Ray said he knows the process of developing a program does not happen out of thin air.
“That’s something I want to key on,” Ray said. “What you want from a game-to-game basis is improvement, and what you want year-to-year from your players is development.”
Ray’s team still has the remainder of this season to play, and with several upcoming games against teams in the SEC, postseason play is not unreachable, but the second-year coach said he believes that is the target for play in March.
“Next year will be the first time we will have our full allotment of 13 scholarship players,” Ray said. “When we have legitimate competition for playing time, that’s when I think we will challenge for postseason play.”
