Southern Miss has had 3 rough men’s basketball seasons. Now they face roster turnover.
Southern Miss basketball is in a pit it has never found itself in before.
A rut that’s three years deep, the single worst trio of seasons in program history. At the helm for all three of those years has been USM grad Jay Ladner.
Ladner has been extremely likable in his return to Hattiesburg and exudes Southern Miss in a way every school dreams its front porch coaches would.
Unfortunately for him and the health of the men’s basketball program, things haven’t exactly worked out. Southern Miss won just nine games in his first year and it somehow got worse in each of the following two years, culminating in the worst season USM has ever had in 2022.
Ladner has been given his fourth year, though, athletic director Jeremy McClain confirmed.
The timing for such a move was already suboptimal, as few teams retain regressing coaches after three seasons and USM will have a new league to compete in next year, but the outlook has only grown dimmer for the next chapter of Ladner’s tenure.
Since the 2022 season’s merciful conclusion, six key players have hit the transfer portal. The six accounted for 106 games started and all played at least 25 minutes per game.
- Tyler Stevenson*
- Jaron Pierre, Jr
- Isaih Moore
- Tae Hardy
- Rashad Bolden
- Walyn Napper
They make up the top four scorers from the season and six of the top seven. That includes Hardy, who played in just seven games but averaged 13.7 points per game.
Of the six scholarship players remaining, none cracked 25 minutes per game and only DeAndre Pinckney topped 20 minutes.
To put their losses into context, 74.4% of the points USM scored as a team came from the outgoing transfers. Five of the six had usage rates above 20 percent with only Bolden below the line at 17.9 percent.
Broken down at an individual level, Napper had one of the country’s best assist rates at 32.5 percent and was one of just six players in Conference USA to record at least 130 assists.
Isaih Moore, who could be on his fourth team in four years, was a productive shot blocker and far-and-away the most efficient inside scorer on the team with a 59.9 percent two-point field goal percentage.
Losing Tyler Stevenson to the portal could be the big one, though. Stevenson scored 1,157 of his 1,200-plus career points within the Ladner era.
The offense has revolved around him in each of the last two years. A top-15 scorer and top-five rebounder in the league, Stevenson’s absence creates a significant hole in the painted area.
Stevenson recently fired off a cryptic tweet and it is unclear if he is still in the portal.
The losses don’t just paint a picture of bleakness, but also ask a question, too. What’s the expectation? What can Ladner and the Golden Eagles do next season that would reaffirm McClain’s commitment and belief?
The expectation is always to compete for championships. For USM, that means a deep run in the Sun Belt tournament next year. It’s not an impossible task, but it is one that will require a complete program turnaround in a single offseason from a coach who has lost 53 more games than he’s won.
Southern Miss has so far secured signatures from Ole Miss transfer Austin Crowley and Mercer transfer Neftali Alvarez.
This story was originally published April 14, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
