Mississippi State Basketball: 7 candidates to replace Ben Howland as head coach

Grant McCasland

There are always a few names floating around when the power conference jobs open up, especially when it’s a geographic match. With all these SEC jobs opening up, there’s a slew of names getting brought up for most of them, and we’ve got a few more of those on this list. For now, we turn our attention towards the man who was one of the darlings of last year’s NCAA Tournament; another coach who might be ready for that next step up.

McCasland has been a successful coach at nearly every level. He’s a former Baylor guard who spent five years on Scott Drew’s staff. He had solid stints as head coach at Midwestern State and Arkansas State before taking over the North Texas program in 2017. He’s won a pair of C-USA regular-season titles and led the Mean Green to the NCAA Tournament last season, prevailing with an opening-round upset over 4-seed Purdue, the first Tourney win in program history.

North Texas has been a successful program under McCasland’s watch, proof that he is ready to take on one of these SEC jobs. Mississippi State isn’t too far from his natural footprint of Texas, and he could certainly make some waves both on the court and recruiting trail with the Bulldogs. Any coach (like Jans before) who can pull an NCAA Tournament upset deserves some serious consideration and McCasland certainly has the experience to warrant legitimate interest.