Mississippi State has been filling out its schedule piece by piece this summer while also aggressively recruiting the NCAA transfer portal. Bulldog head coach Chris Jans is entering his fourth season at the helm in Starkville. He has led his squad to the NCAA tournament three times, and he will certainly be able to do it again. The Southeastern Conference has become one of, if not the toughest, leagues in America, and today, the Bulldogs learned who they will be taking on in conference play this year.
State will take on Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Georgia, Missouri, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt at the Humphrey Coliseum. They will travel to take on Kentucky, Florida, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Missouri, Texas, Alabama, and Texas A&M. The Bulldogs will take on Missouri, Alabama, and rival Ole Miss twice.
Everyone knew the conference schedule would be demanding, but State has also put together a strong nonconference schedule. The Bulldogs and Iowa State are slated to do battle on November 10th in Sioux Falls, along with facing off against Memphis on December 20th in Starkville, and will also take on SMU again, this time in Starkville on Black Friday, as it will follow the annual Egg Bowl matchup on the football field, which will be played in Starkville at 11 a.m. CT. It seems like every season of the Jans era in Starkville, the nonconference schedule gets tougher and more challenging with matchups against Utah, Pitt, Memphis, and McNeeselast year. Still, the Humphrey Coliseum is now set to host a pair of these games which will be a good way to get a nice crowd of maroon and white faithful in the Hump leading up to SEC play.
Like most college basketball teams, the Bulldogs’ recruiting efforts in the transfer portal will dictate heavily how the upcoming season will go. The transfer portal class was strong, with Jayden Epps (Georgetown), Quincy Ballard (Wichita State), Amier Ali (Arizona State), Ja’Borri McGhee (UAB), Brandon Walker (Montana State), and Achor Achor (Kansas State) all set to join the roster next year. Also, perhaps the biggest news of the offseason was not an addition to the roster; instead, it was Josh Hubbard, who declared for the NBA draft, opting to return to Starkville for his junior season. It is shaping up to be another exciting year for Bulldog basketball inside the Humphrey Coliseum as State will push for a historic fourth straight trip to March Madness.
The SEC has gotten considerably stronger on the basketball front the last couple of years, but with State’s more challenging schedule this year, fans and pundits will have a good idea of how good this Bulldog team is before it even shares the court with a conference foe. However, the conference schedule will be another beast entirely to tackle, but the Bulldogs will be battle-tested by that point.