MSU finding stability under Purcell
There's only been 13 games as a sample size, but the Sam Purcell era is off to a strong start for Mississippi State women's basketball.
The Bulldogs are three years removed from having lost its most successful coach in school history when Vic Schaefer left State for Texas during the pandemic in April of 2020. Since that time, there's been nothing in the form of stability.
Nikki McCray-Penson took over in 2020 and the Bulldogs missed postseason for the first time in six years. McCray-Penson stepped down from her position after just one year when she left the team less than a month before the season last year and Doug Novak took over as interim coach.
The Bulldogs finished last season with a 15-14 record but fought valiantly through tough circumstances. Along the way, State had transfers and injuries that decimated the roster as the group got down to just seven scholarship players midway through the Southeastern Conference slate.
A few weeks after the season, Purcell was hired as the next head coach after spending three decades as an assistant under some great head coaches. The last of those was at Louisville where he helped the Cardinals to two NCAA Final Fours.
Purcell built a roster around All-SEC players Anastasia Hayes, Denae Carter and Jessika Carter as well as talented scorer JerKaila Jordan. Purcell brought in two transfers from Louisville in Ahlana Smith and Ramani Parker, grabbed another in Asianae Johnson from St. Bonaventure, got a graduate from Florida State in Kourtney Weber and Miami 6-foot-4 forward Nyayongah Gony.
One of the most impressive players in the non-conference slate to this point has been freshman Debreasha Powe as well. With all of those players together, it's made for a full roster and something that State hasn't had in a couple of years.
Purcell's challenge to this point has been making sure that everyone understands that there is no star players on this team. He wants them to all play off of each other.
“If I'm looking at who is the leading scorer, that would be different from my philosophy,” Purcell said. “My philosophy is let's run the plays right, let's execute and let's make the open shot. If that determines that you're the leading scorer, so be it, but let's play team basketball and get high percentage shots.”
In the first part of the schedule, getting the players to mesh has certainly been the challenge. The Bulldogs have had their ups and downs. They had to go to an extremely difficult place to play in South Dakota and dropped a 63-62 game to the Jackrabbits of South Dakota State early at a place where the home team has been 31-3 in the last three years.
MSU also lost an overtime game to Nebraska, which has a 10-3 record and has won fivestraight games ,including two top 25 wins.
One thing that hasn't been up and down about the Bulldogs is their defense. State has the second best defense in the league and it's fifth in the country surrendering just 50.6 points per game this year. No one in the league has as many games holding an opponent under 50 points with seven.
Offense has been a work in progress for now, but there have been plenty of players that have contributed. Carter leads the team with 14.2 points and averages 8.4 rebounds in her return to the court after a year off. She had 29 points in State's last win to tie a career high.
Jordan is averaging 12.1 points a game, Powe is averaging 10.8 points and 5.8 rebounds as a freshman and Johnson 9.9 points off the bench. As Purcell said, he feels like he has a roster that can have a score from just about anyone on any given night.
“The special thing about this team is that a different person can go off every night,” Purcell said. “Can we be the team that realizes who it is?. When our team can recognize that and also call the right set to create the right shot, watch out – we've got something special.”
Purcell's squad goes into conference play on the longest winning streak of his young career with six-straight victories. The team has won all of those by at least 25 points and had two of its most impressive wins the last two games in the Sun Coast Challenge in Tampa with an 83-47 win over Old Dominion and 87-58 victory over New Mexico.
Now, it's time for the games that are most important.
State will hit the conference road taking on Vanderbilt on Thursday and face off against arch rival Ole Miss on New Year's Day at 5 p.m. at Humphrey Coliseum.