Mississippi State Basketball: 7 candidates to replace Ben Howland as head coach
By Joey Loose
After seven years, change has come to the Bulldogs program, as Ben Howland has been relieved as head coach at Mississippi State Basketball. Himself a native of Oregon, most of Howland’s career took place on the West Coast, spending these last seven years trying to change the fortunes of this SEC school. In the end, he just didn’t do enough to stem the tide.
Howland played guard at Santa Barbara CC and Weber State, beginning his coaching career and a brief international playing career. His first coaching job was as a graduate assistant at Gonzaga, long before Mark Few came around and led the program to today’s greatness. He got his first full-time coaching job on staff at UC Santa Barbara, spending twelve seasons as an assistant for the Gauchos.
His head coaching career got started in 1994 at Northern Arizona, the first successful stop on his journey. He took the Lumberjacks to a pair of Big Sky titles, including an NCAA Tournament bid in 1998, the first in program history. The only other time Northern Arizona made the Big Dance was the year after his departure with a team he mostly built; Howland is certainly responsible for most of the program’s success.
He then spent four years as head coach at Pittsburgh, not only leading the Panthers to two Big East regular-season titles, but back-to-back Sweet Sixteen runs. In 2003, that success led UCLA to bring him back to the West Coast. Howland proceeded to lead the Bruins to three straight Final Four appearances between 2006 and 2008; still the most recent team to accomplish this feat. Unfortunately, the success did not continue, and Howland was fired in 2013 after a few subpar seasons.
Howland returned to coaching when Mississippi State hired him in 2015, putting their faith in him to resurrect a Bulldogs program that had struggled mightily in recent years. Howland didn’t quite have the same levels of success at his previous jobs but did turn the Bulldogs back into a winning program, including an NCAA Tournament bid in 2019. However, the Bulldogs were upset in the first round and never returned, settling for a slew of NIT appearances.
It’s time for a fresh start at Mississippi State and it’s coming at quite the time. Several other SEC jobs are open this offseason, meaning there’s going to be a lot of new vibes in the conference next season. Consider also that Oklahoma and Texas join the SEC and you can understand why Mississippi State might get even more buried in this conference. The key is to make a smart hire, and we’ve narrowed this hunt down to a number of intriguing candidates, the kind of coaches who might just be able to take the Bulldogs over the top.