STARKVILLE — Mississippi State women’s basketball came up just short of the NCAA tournament last season.

The Bulldogs (21-11) are back now and didn’t have to worry much on Selection Sunday, drawing a No. 9 seed and a matchup versus No. 8 California (25-8) in Los Angeles on Saturday (4:30 p.m., ESPN2).

“It’s just goosebumps as an adult to see these kids have an experience that they’ll never forget,” MSU third-year coach Sam Purcell said.

Here’s our prediction for the first-round March Madness game.

Buy Mississippi State NCAA tournament tickets vs Cal

Mississippi State women’s basketball vs Cal prediction

Mississippi State 79, Cal 76: The Bears are one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the nation with 8.9 makes per game. Guards Ioanna Krimili and Lulu Twidale are both in the top 12 nationally making nearly three 3-pointers per game. That should make for a high-scoring game, especially with Mississippi State allowing 6.5 3-pointers per game.

Mississippi State could have the advantage with its depth. Cal has three players that play more than 30 minutes per game compared to only one for Mississippi State. That’s where MSU center Madina Okot could tilt the game. If she can have a dominant performance in the post that causes foul trouble for Cal, the Bulldogs could be in a good spot.

MSU has had plenty of turnover issues this season, but Cal forces only 14.7 per game.

When does Mississippi State play in March Madness?

• Date: Saturday, March 22
• Time: 4:30 p.m. CT

Where to watch Mississippi State vs Cal

MORE: Mississippi State basketball vs Baylor prediction: Our pick for 2025 NCAA tournament first round

Mississippi State vs Cal tickets

Sam Sklar is the Mississippi State beat reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at ssklar@gannett.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_.

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STARKVILLE — Mississippi State basketball is in the NCAA tournament, so third-year coach Chris Jans will receive a contract extension and salary raise.

Jans automatically receives a one-year extension and $100,000 raise each time MSU makes the NCAA tournament, according to his Bulldog Club contract obtained by the Clarion Ledger.

It will increase his salary to $4.4 million for next season. That salary will keep increasing by $100,000 through March 2028. Then, his salary jumps to $5.45 million through the 2028-29 season and $5.55 million though the 2029-30 season.

The No. 8 seed Bulldogs (21-12) will play No. 9 Baylor (19-14) on Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina. The game time has not yet been announced.

Jans has led Mississippi State to three consecutive NCAA tournament appearances for the first time in program history since 2003-05. He joins only three other coaches in SEC history — John Calipari, Bruce Pearl and Tubby Smith — to win at least 21 games and reach the NCAA tournament in each of the first three seasons.

His 63 MSU wins are the most in program history for a coach through the first three seasons.

Chris Jans contract bonus

Jans is owed a $50,000 bonus for making the NCAA tournament. He can earn more based on how far Mississippi State goes in the tournament.

• Second round: $100,000
• Sweet 16: $150,000
• Elite Eight: $250,000
• Final Four: $300,000
• National championship game: $400,000
• National championship won: $500,000

MORE: Chris Jans explains Mississippi State’s poor play to end loss vs Missouri in SEC tournament

Jans, like other head coaches at Mississippi State and Ole Miss, has two contracts: one with the state and another with The Bulldog Club, Mississippi State’s athletic foundation. State law prohibits public employees from signing longer than four-year contracts, and the schools circumvent it with the athletic foundation contracts. Jans’ performance bonuses are tied to his state contract.

Sam Sklar is the Mississippi State beat reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at ssklar@gannett.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_.

Former Gov. Haley Barbour finally said the quiet part out loud.

During a recent speech to the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government and Capitol Press Corps, the former two-term governor and master communicator said taxing groceries was a good thing because everybody has to eat.

Barbour reasoned that it is important for all people to have skin in the game — to pay taxes — because “otherwise, they will vote to pave the streets with gold if they don’t have to pay anything.”

Various conservative politicians and other policymakers espouse the Barbour philosophy that a tax on food is fair and necessary. To ensure that poor people pay taxes, too, they advocate for a grocery tax that absorbs a much greater percentage of the income of low income families.

The quiet part out loud is a reference to the fact that as governor from 2004 until 2012, Barbour blocked legislative efforts to eliminate the grocery tax and offset that lost revenue, at least in part by increasing the tax on cigarettes. Barbour vetoed two bills in 2006: one to eliminate the highest in the nation 7% tax on food and the other to cut in half the levy on groceries.

Veto messages are where governors articulate their reasoning for opposing legislation. In neither veto of the grocery tax cut bills did the governor talk about “fairness.”

Instead, he talked about the fact that the combination of cutting or eliminating the grocery tax and increasing the cigarette tax was not revenue neutral. The legislation, Barbour argued at the time, would produce less revenue for the state.

He maintained that it sent the wrong message to cut taxes at a time when he was going to Congress to try to secure federal funds to help with the recovery from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. And in fairness to the governor, Hurricane Katrina was the seminal event of Barbour’s tenure as governor and one of the seminal events in the state’s history, and his ability to obtain those funds was paramount for the success of the Gulf Coast and south Mississippi.

So it is fair to say Katrina was heavy on Barbour’s mind in 2006 when the Legislature sent him the bills to cut the grocery tax.

It is clear, though, that Mississippi’s political leadership still has similar views as Barbour on the grocery tax. Since Barbour has left office, there have been two major reductions in the income tax: one in 2016 when Phil Bryant was governor and another in 2022 when Tate Reeves was governor.

There has been no cut in the grocery tax during that time.

This year the Senate proposes another major cut in the income tax and a reduction in the grocery tax from 7 cents to 5 cents on every dollar purchase of groceries.

There are efforts by the House leadership and Reeves to completely eliminate the income tax. In addition, the House tax cut plan essentially would trim the grocery tax to 5.5%. The House plan in most instances also would raise the sales tax on most other retail items from 7% to 8.5%.

And there are retail items other than groceries that most all people need. After all, most everyone, including poor people who might not pay an income tax, must buy clothes, household utensils and numerous other retail items that under the House plan would cost more because of the increase in the sales tax.

In short, there are many opportunities other than the grocery tax to collect taxes from poor people.

But just to recap:

• Only 12 states tax food like Mississippi does.

• Mississippi not only has the highest state-imposed tax on food, but also has one of the country’s highest sales taxes on other retail items.

• Mississippi has one of the lowest income taxes in the country and it is getting even lower thanks to the 2022 tax cut that is still being phased in.

The aforementioned tax structure results in Mississippi’s low-wage earners paying a greater percentage of their income in state and local taxes than do the state’s more affluent residents, a 2024 study found.

The report by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy found that Mississippi has the nation’s 19th-most regressive tax system where low-income residents are forced to pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes than the state’s wealthier citizens.

The study shows the income tax is the only component of the Mississippi tax system that requires the wealthy to pay more than the poor.

And even though Mississippi has the nation’s highest percentage of poor people, the quiet part that needs to be told louder is that our leaders are working to make the tax structure even more regressive.