Kentucky’s next big challenge has been an outlier in the transfer portal era
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Josh Hubbard stayed at Mississippi State, citing coach trust and loyalty.
- He leads the SEC in scoring and improved most of his raw stats.
- His decision contrasts with portal trends, marking him an outlier.
The speculation started almost as soon as the game was over.
Two years ago, following an epic performance in which he hit three 3-pointers in the final minute of what turned out to be a 91-89 loss to Kentucky, freshman guard Josh Hubbard encountered John Calipari in the postgame handshake line.
Correctly anticipating that the transfer portal was going to get crazy in just a few short weeks, some UK fans joked — with a good deal of seriousness mixed in — that Calipari, a coach with an always-be-recruiting reputation, was planting the seeds to bring Hubbard to Lexington with that brief exchange on the sideline.
This was the game in which Reed Sheppard further solidified his status as UK basketball folk hero, scoring 32 points, dishing out seven assists and hitting a floater to beat the buzzer and fend off the Hubbard-led comeback attempt. Hubbard scored 34 that night, including that trio of triples in the final 53 seconds, the last one tying the game up with just eight seconds remaining.
In the days that followed, Hubbard and Sheppard directed complimentary messages at each other on social media. Kentucky fans had fallen in love with Sheppard even more after his performance in Starkville, and Hubbard’s own showing — during and after the game — won him plenty of admirers within the UK fan base.
Of course, neither Calipari nor Hubbard were with the Wildcats by the time the next season rolled around. The Hall of Fame coach left Lexington for Arkansas, and the budding SEC star stayed put in Starkville.
Hubbard was even better in year two with the Bulldogs, and the transfer portal was even crazier in the offseason that followed. Surely he’d test the waters this time around, college basketball observers opined. He did go through the NBA draft process, but upon withdrawing his name from consideration, he promptly made it clear that he was headed back to Mississippi State for a third year under head coach Chris Jans.
The portal? It wasn’t for Hubbard.
“It just never crossed my mind, honestly,” he said. “I believe in Coach Jans. I believe in his work. I believe he’s one of the best coaches in the country. I’ve seen him behind the scenes, and … he gets the best out of you each and every day. You know, it’s just hard to not play for a coach like that — that only wants to see the team and you succeed and get better each and every day.”
During the annual SEC media day gathering this preseason, Jans took a question about the “uncertainty” regarding Hubbard’s status a few months earlier, with college stars — and even many guys considered role players — commanding seven-figure payouts by putting their names in the portal.
“There may be some uncertainty at a national level,” Jans said. “I didn’t have any uncertainty with it, just because I’m with him daily. I’ve got to know his family very well, what kind of people they are, what they stand for. I understand the narrative. Anyone that good, that young, there’s going to be talk about it.”
There was talk, for sure. Hubbard is the type of player that’s tailor-made for the transfer portal these days. He’s a proven star at the highest level of college basketball, but — listed, perhaps generously, at just 6 feet tall — he’s not considered to be a legitimate NBA draft prospect.
NIL payments to specific players aren’t public record, so there’s nothing official on how much Hubbard is making in year three at Mississippi State, but it’s safe to assume that he could have commanded a considerably higher payday had he decided to test the portal.
The last college basketball offseason was filled with stories of sky-high-dollar sums going to players who weren’t nearly as proven as Hubbard. How difficult was it to tune that out?
“It’s not as hard as you think, because I know where my heart’s at,” Hubbard said, adding that his parents raised him to be loyal to those who were loyal to him. “And so it was just a no-brainer for me to just have that answer in (my) heart — a feeling of wanting to come back.”
Josh Hubbard in the SEC
Jans predicted in the preseason that Hubbard would be better than ever in year three.
It’s difficult to argue with the results so far.
The junior guard is the league’s leading scorer, averaging 23.0 points per game, with his raw numbers up from last season in basically every major statistical category.
In the SEC opener this past weekend, Hubbard tied a career-high with 38 points in leading Mississippi State to a 101-98 overtime victory over Texas. He dropped 30 points in a 72-53 win over Oklahoma on Wednesday night.
Hubbard ranks in the top five in the conference in made 3-pointers and made free throws per game. He earned SEC player of the week honors following the win over Texas, and — in a league filled with great guards — Hubbard is a legitimate early candidate for the SEC’s top player honors.
None of this should be a surprise to those who have paid attention to his college career to this point, and that showing in Starkville two years ago ensured that many Kentucky fans would be following him closely.
The Cats will get another look at Hubbard on Saturday in Rupp Arena — with UK and Mississippi State set for an 8:30 p.m. ET tipoff on SEC Network — and the league’s fans know by now that Hubbard is capable of a highlight-reel performance on any given night.
He’s also an outlier in the best league in college basketball.
Of the 15 players selected for the All-SEC preseason teams, only two others — Florida’s Alex Condon and Thomas Haugh — were entering their third season with the same team. Neither Condon nor Haugh were stars as freshmen, however, and that duo won a national championship with the Gators last season. A return to Gainesville was a no-brainer.
Mississippi State, meanwhile, has made the NCAA Tournament in all three seasons under Jans — just the second time in program history MSU has qualified for the bracket in three consecutive years — but the Bulldogs haven’t won a March Madness game since 2008. In each of Hubbard’s first two seasons, they were bounced in the first round, both times as an 8 seed.
The preseason outlook for this season looked similar. Mississippi State was picked to finish 10th in the SEC back in the fall. A disappointing first half of the season has the Bulldogs at No. 65 in the KenPom ratings, placing them 14th in the SEC.
Yet they’re off to a 2-0 start in league play, and Hubbard has continued to talk up this team’s potential in recent interviews. The third-year player also knows that the league schedule will be filled with opportunities to put statement victories on an NCAA Tournament résumé.
As confident an on-the-court player as you’ll find, Hubbard has said he’s been taking cues from Jans since he got to campus. The head coach’s clear trust in Hubbard’s abilities — especially as a scorer — from the beginning of their time together has been instrumental in his development, as well as his loyalty to the Bulldogs.
“He’s just so quick to click with,” Hubbard said of his coach. “You just know that he wants to win. He’s going to put you in the best position. It’s just so easy to click — and just easy to stay — with him.”
By the time the next college basketball offseason rolls around, Hubbard will likely have another decision to make. He’s not currently in the 2026 NBA draft picture. Will the native of Madison, Mississippi — about a two-hour drive from Starkville — run it back with Jans and the Bulldogs for one more season?
Or will he finally test the transfer waters, perhaps go looking for a legitimate national title contender or some other school that will offer him a massive NIL deal for his final year of college?
Jans says he tells his assistant coaches all the time that he considers any potential returnees to be “in the portal” until informed otherwise. That’s what college basketball has become over the past couple of years.
But, to this point, Hubbard has been an exception.
“I think it speaks volumes to who he is, what kind of person he is, how strongly he believes in our program and our community and our university,” Jans said back in the fall. “I never get tired of talking about Josh. I had someone come into practice the other day that has been around a little bit yearly. And he asked me, ‘Is he really as good a kid as he seems to be, as he comes off to be?’ And I go, ‘He’s better.’
“A lot of coaches talk about kids being better people than they are players. It’s a cliché, but that’s Josh. That’s his identity. That’s who he is. And that’s a heck of a statement, because he’s a hell of a player. And to say that he’s a better person just speaks kudos to the quality human being that he is.”
