How good is this Mississippi State men’s basketball team?

The Bulldogs, 14-1, are ranked No. 14 in the country and, in my opinion, are under-rated at that. They are balanced. They are deep. Defensively, they are special.

But don’t take it from me. Let’s listen to Richard Williams, the coach who guided the 1996 Bulldogs to an SEC Tournament Championship and the Final Four, and who is the radio commentator who watches and analyzes these Bulldogs every night out. So, Richard, how good is this State team?

“This team is really, really good, especially on defense,” Williams said. “They are really deep. And they are so well-coached, always thoroughly prepared. Chris Jans demands perfection He coaches them hard. He’s old school.”

Yes, State is really good, really deep. Are they elite? We are about to find out, beginning Saturday night. For the Bulldogs, the next 11 days and four games are going to be basketball’s equivalent to dribbling through land mines.

First up: Sixth-ranked Kentucky comes to The Hump Saturday night. Three nights later, State visits No. 2 Auburn, a team many experts believe be the nation’s best. Next Saturday, arch-rival and No 23 ranked Ole Miss goes to Starkville. Then, on Jan. 21, State visits No. 1 Tennessee for another Tuesday night game.

So, yes, 11 days from now we will have an idea of whether State is simply really good – or possibly elite. State’s next four opponents have a combined record of 53-7. Put it this way: Even a really good team, could go 0-4 against that stretch if it does not play well.

This will be a very different Kentucky team that comes to The Hump. Not a single player on scholarship returned from the 2023-24 team that won 23 games and defeated Mississippi State twice. Not a single coach returns either. John Calipari has moved to Kentucky. Mark Pope, a mainstay of the Kentucky team that State defeated for the SEC Championship in 1996, now coaches the Wildcats.

Kentucky still plays fast. The Wildcats still wear blue and white, but the similarities pretty much end there. Under Calipari, Kentucky was often a young team made up of McDonald’s All Americans and five-star recruits, rich in future NBA talent but often adjusting to the college game and leaving for the NBA after one or two years. Pope’s Wildcats are mostly seasoned veterans, seniors and grad students – many of them transfers from mid-majors.

Point guard Lamont Butler, a 22-year-old grad student came to Kentucky from San Diego State. Shooting guard Ortega Owen, a 21-year-old junior, transferred in from Oklahoma. Small forward Jaxson Robinson, a 22-year-old grad student, played at Texas A & M, Arkansas and BYU before following Pope to Kentucky. Power Andrew Carr, who will turn 23 next month, is still another grad student who played at Delaware and Wake Forest before joining Kentucky. Sixth man Koby Brea, a 50 percent shooter from 3-point range, is another 22-year-old grad student, played four years at Dayton.

Kentucky, like State, is deep. The Wildcats have 10 players who average 4.4 points or more. They love to shoot the three-ball, averaging a whopping 27.4 treys a game and making nearly 36 percent of those. Guarding the perimeter will be crucial to success for State. State generally does that well. 

In fact, as the record will attest, State has played well in almost every facet of the sport.

A weakness?

“Well, like a lot of teams, this team seems to play to the level of the competition,” Williams said.

For the next 11 days, that should not be a problem.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A former Jackson State University administrator’s sex discrimination lawsuit against Mississippi’s public university governing board will proceed, a federal judge ruled in a lengthy order this week. 

Though a majority of Debra Mays-Jackson’s claims against the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees were dismissed, the Southern District of Mississippi allowed two to survive — one against the IHL and the other against the individual trustees. 

For now, the lawsuit’s playing field is winnowed to the claim that IHL discriminated against Mays-Jackson, a former vice president at Jackson State, when trustees did not interview her after she applied to the university’s top post in 2023. 

The recent order puts Mays-Jackson and her attorney, Lisa Ross, a JSU alumnus, one step closer to taking depositions and conducting discovery about the IHL’s presidential search process and decisionmaking. 

Ross filed the lawsuit in November 2023, the same day the board hired from within, elevating Marcus Thompson from IHL deputy commissioner to the president of Mississippi’s largest historically Black university, even though Thompson was not one of the 79 applicants to the position. 

“Without this sex discrimination lawsuit, the defendants would continue to falsely claim the males they have selected as President of JSU were clearly better qualified than the females who were rejected on account of their sex,” Ross said in a statement. 

An IHL spokesperson said the board’s policy is not to comment on pending litigation. 

The court dismissed one of Mays-Jackson’s claims over the board’s 2020 hiring of Thomas Hudson, largely because Mays-Jackson never applied for the job. 

But Mays-Jackson argued she was not afforded the opportunity to apply because the board activated a policy that permitted trustees to suspend a presidential search and hire anyone known to the board, regardless of whether that person applied for the role. 

Recently, the board had used that policy to hire President Tracy Cook at Alcorn State University, President Joe Paul at the University of Southern Mississippi and Chancellor Glenn Boyce at the University of Mississippi. 

In her suit, Mays-Jackson alleged the IHL has never used this policy to elevate a woman to lead one of Mississippi’s eight public universities. IHL did not confirm or deny that allegation in response to a question from Mississippi Today. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Jan. 10, 1966 

Vernon Dahmer Sr. defended his family from a KKK attack at their home near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 

The farmer, businessman, entrepreneur and NAACP leader had dedicated his life to voting rights. Upset by his work on voting rights in the African-American community, Klansmen firebombed the family’s home while they were sleeping and began firing their guns into the home. Dahmer grabbed his shotgun and fired back at Klansmen, enabling his family to escape safely out a back window. Flames from the blaze seared his lungs, and he died a day later. 

On his deathbed, a reporter pressed him on why he kept pushing for voting rights for Black Americans. Dahmer explained, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” 

The case led to a few convictions, but the Klansmen didn’t stay behind bars long because governors pardoned them, commuted their sentences or released them early. Most of the killers walked free, including Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers, who ordered the attack. 

Bowers was finally convicted in 1998 and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2006. 

In 2020, county officials erected a statue in honor of Vernon Dahmer outside the same courthouse where Black residents once protested for the right to vote. Sculptor Ben Watts and artist Vixon Sullivan worked together on the statue.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.