By Parrish Alford
Madison-Ridgeland Academy alumnus Josh Hubbard, with another season remaining in a magnificent Mississippi State career, will have a decision to make on his basketball future soon.
It’s not personal, it’s business.
It’s the modern age of college athletics, a transient time in which athletes of all sports are basically free agents on one-year deals each season.
Hubbard, though, will have more options than many: he can test NBA waters or NIL waters or return to the school that he’s loved and has loved him back.
He declared for the draft last season before choosing to return, and his stock has not really increased this season according to various mock drafts from ESPN and nbadraft.net
“We’re definitely going to look at it at the end of the year,” Jason Hubbard, Josh’s dad, told Mississippi Scoreboard.
A 6-foot guard, Hubbard is among the program’s most prolific scorers through 90 games, amassing 1,675 points in that span to surpass greats like Jeff Malone and Darryl Wilson. You have to go back to the 1950s to find Bailey Howell and Jim Ashmore who scored more in the same window.
If he averages 20 points this season – he’s at 21 per game this season – he’ll become the first Mississippi State player to do that for three-straight seasons since Malone in the early 1980s.
Hubbard recently set a new SEC record for consecutive games with a 3-pointer, a streak that ended at 69 when he was 0-for-4 behind the arc in the Bulldogs’ 88-68 loss to Arkansas at Humphrey Coliseum Saturday.
Inside the arc Hubbard was 7-for-11. He finished with 16 points and five assists.
The SEC’s 3-point record before this season was 66 held by former Ole Miss guard Marshall Henderson.
After reaching the NCAA tournament in each of its first three seasons under coach Chris Jans, State is now just 11-13 overall, 3-8 in SEC play, tied with Ole Miss for 12th out of 16 teams in the SEC.
Those decision days are ahead for Josh Hubbard. For now, the career continues to unfold, and when the ball is in Hubbard’s hands there’s a measure of hope for the Bulldogs.
Overall, it’s been a season of frustration for everyone.
“Point of attack defense, too many times on a consistent basis we’re just not doing a good enough job of old-fashioned guard the basketball,” Jans said Saturday after the loss to Arkansas. “Too many times the offense is getting where they want to go.”
Jans is perplexed as to why solid practices – workouts often marked by the effort and execution he wants – aren’t translating on game days.
“There hasn’t been a game all year long that walking out of that tunnel I didn’t feel like we were going to win,” Jans said.
But the wins haven’t come, leaving Hubbard’s consistent stat sheet too often without the most important achievement.
For example, Hubbard scored a game-high 31 points, including 14 of MSU’s 16 points, and had 20 in the first half in a 73-64 loss to Tennessee Wednesday night at Starkville. One of his best shooting nights of the season, Hubbard made 13 of 24 shots from the field, 4 of 9 from 3-point range.
Hubbard ranks No. 3 in the SEC and No. 25 in the country in scoring.
Mississippi State fans aren’t the only ones who appreciate what Hubbard has done. So do opponents. Every opponent. Hubbard is at the top of their scouting report every game.
Sometimes the approach of “we’re not going to let Hubbard beat us,” has been effective for Bulldogs’ foes.
After a 108 3-point field goals as both a freshman and sophomore, he’s not likely to have 100 3-point makes this season, standing at 64 3-point field goals after the Tennessee game.
Hubbard, with four 3-pointers Wednesday, has 280 for his career, tying school record holder Barry Stewart, who had 280 from 2007-2010.
Barring a magical run through the SEC Tournament, State could have as few as eight games left.
“It’s been hard on him. He’s not used to losing,” said Hubbard’s high school coach, Richard Duease, the winningest high school basketball coach in Mississippi and a member of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.
Hard, yes, but not unexpected, Jason Hubbard said.
“He’s prepared, and he’s been prepared because I told him these days would come,” Jason Hubbard said. “His preparation was 2-3 years ago for this. He’s carried himself in a very professional manner. He’s done a great job of handling where he is now.”
Josh Hubbard’s growth as a leader is helping him work through a difficult team season, Jason Hubbard said.
“One thing he’s adjusted is his leadership,” Jans said. “Sometimes being a leader is one of the hardest things you’ll have to do. You’re trying to now gather up people to see it your way and head in the same direction as winning.”
Josh Hubbard, who earned at starting spot as an eighth-grader at MRA, never experienced a losing season in high school. Indeed, he led the Patriots to the MAIS Overall Tournament championship in 2021 as a sophomore and the runner-up spot in 2022 as a junior. Hubbard went on to become score the most points in a career in Mississippi history, a record that has stood for 47 years. He broke Robert Woodard’s record, who also played at MSU.
Duease knew he had a special player early in Hubbard’s career. It was confirmed when Hubbard was a freshman and hit the winning basket in a shootout against Gulfport High, one of the best high school boys basketball programs in Mississippi history.
“It was his 46th point of the game,” Duease said.
“Hubbard has been a great scorer at all levels of play. He’s a gifted athlete, it’s true, but gifted athletes are set apart by work ethic.
“Even when he’s away from State he’s in our gym putting up shots,” Duease said.
It was in the MRA gym last June, well after his high school days, that the legend of Josh Hubbard among Patriots players was further established.
Hubbard attended a camp for younger players, and Duease saw an opportunity to illustrate the results of work ethic to MRA’s current roster.
He backed Hubbard almost 40 feet from the goal and said, “Who thinks he can get five out of 10 from here?”
Players were told to stand in one spot if they believed in Hubbard, another if they did not. The losers had to do push-ups.
“He had some who believed in him,” the coach said.
More did not, and they were the ones doing push-ups as Hubbard hit all 10 shots.
State’s loss to Tennessee was its eighth in its last nine games. Most of those have been blowouts. The outlier is an 80-66 win at LSU on Jan. 28.
For Hubbard, results are harder to come by, but effort hasn’t changed.
“He always stays confident,” Jans said. “You have to. You erase the miss and get to the next play or next shot. He’s shown everybody that’s paid attention that he’s able to do that.”
Hubbard had to push through a tough first half at Missouri on Jan. 31. He found his stroke in the second half. The Bulldogs played better and put themselves in position to win before falling 84-79.
“They’re all human,” Jans said. “They were frustrated. (Hubbard) had a back spasm there toward the end of the half that I don’t think anybody knew. He really worked on it at halftime. Like Josh Hubbard does, he made some tough shots and got us back in the game.”
Hubbard gets a chance to become the career leader in 3-pointers at MSU when the Bulldogs take on Ole Miss Saturday at 5:30 p.m. on ESPN2 in Oxford.
Parrish Alford, a two-time Mississippi sports writer of the year, was raised in Denham Springs, Louisiana and graduated from Northeast Louisiana University before the school changed its name to Louisiana-Monroe.
He’s covered college sports in Mississippi since 1989, spending time as a beat writer for multiple seasons at each of the state’s Division I schools.
He’s most known for his work as a beat writer and columnist for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo, where he spent 30 years.
He is the author of “Habitual Deadline – sports stories of three-plus decades from the guy who came and stayed.”
A Christian, husband, father and grandfather, he is currently the editor of American Family News (AFN.net), a division of American Family Association.
