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

Bob Richey

There are a whole bunch of SEC openings and these lists often have some very similar names repeated on them. It’s entirely true that these are different programs looking in different directions for their next leads, but we truly believe that Richey is the type of name that is going to latch on with one of these programs, either now or in the years to come.

Richey was born in New Orleans and has spent basically his entire career in the state of South Carolina, right in the SEC footprint. He served solid stints as an assistant at both Charleston Southern and Furman before being promoted to head coach of the Paladins in 2017. These last five seasons have seen him lead Furman to a host of success, average greater than 22 wins a season and finishing top 3 in the SoCon all five seasons.

Comparatively, the negative for Richey is that he’s yet to lead a team to the NCAA Tournament, let alone pull off an opening-round upset like some of these other coaches. However, he’s a rising name in coaching circles and has certainly shown that he can coach and recruit at an impressive level. We’re not sure if this Furman coach will get an SEC job this offseason, but there’s no denying that someone with Richey’s drive and energy could do wonders in Starkville.

We have completed our run through of seven candidates for Mississippi State; who do you think is going to be the next head coach of these Bulldogs?