Jackson State women’s basketball ended last season with a 65-64 loss to Southern in the Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament semifinals on a 30-foot, last-second shot by Aleightyah Fontenot.

The loss cost the Tigers a chance at a third consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament and prompted coach Tomekia Reed to turn to the 2023-24 season with a focus on chemistry the previous team didn't possess.

“We had a lot of friction on the team down the stretch that I had to get rid of," Reed said at the SWAC basketball preseason media day in October.

The roster has changed, including the addition of an SEC transfer, but the Tigers also return several key players and are the preseason pick to win the SWAC.

The new look made an impressive start Nov. 8, defeating NCAA Division II member LeMoyne-Owen College 113-39. Jackson State (1-0) returns to action at 6 p.m. Wednesday against Tougaloo College at the Lee E. Williams Athletics and Assembly Center.

The outlook for the season is bright, but there remains a dark cloud: Reed's contract status. She signed a four-year contract extension in 2020; it is set to expire March 31, 2024, and there has been no mention of even discussions about another extension. Reed has said "no comment" on multiple occasions to questions about her contract status, and athletic director Ashley Robinson did not reply to two requests for comment this week.

Jackson State women's basketball is long, lean, athletic and deep

Reed hasn't forgotten how late in an 83-77 loss to LSU in the 2022 NCAA Tournament that SWAC player of the year Ameshya Williams-Holiday picked up her fourth foul. Reed looked down her bench and saw a lack of height to fill in until Williams-Holiday for the final minutes.

“I tried to milk the clock,” Reed said in January about that game. “I knew we did not have the height to match them inside.”

Height likely won't be a concern this season. JSU returns a pair of 6-foot-1 guards in Ti’lan Boler, the SWAC preseason player of the year, and Miya Crump. Daphane White, another preseason All-SWAC selection, is 6-5. Angel Jackson, the preseason All-SWAC defensive player of the year, is 6-6. Reed added Auburn transfer Mya Pratcher, a 6-3 guard.

Reed enters the season on an expiring contract

After her team's narrow victory in that NCAA Tournament game, LSU coach Kim Mulkey sent a warning to Jackson State when she revealed her midcourt conversation with Reed after the final buzzer.

"I said, 'You ain't going to be at Jackson State long if they don't pay you,' " Mulkey said. "And I'm not her agent, I'm not her best friend. I just know talent, and I respect people from afar on a job well done."

In the five seasons before Reed was hired, the Jackson State women’s basketball team went 69-86, including 47-51 in SWAC games. The Tigers hadn't won a regular-season SWAC title since the 2006-07 season, when they were co-champions with Prairie View.

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Since Reed's hiring in 2018, JSU has won four consecutive regular-season SWAC titles starting in 2019-20 and made two appearances in the NCAA Tournament.  Reed has become a coaching star on a national stage, yet she enters this season on a contract that expires the week before the NCAA Women's Final Four.

She has had feelers from other schools, and in June 2022 told the Clarion Ledger she had turned down an offer "paying more for me and my staff in a great location," choosing to remain in Jackson, where she said she had more work to do and where she has roots. She starred in basketball at Murrah High, also the alma mater of JSU athletic director Ashley Robinson and Tigers men's basketball coach Mo Williams. She went on to play at nearby Hinds Community College and Southern Miss and was coaching at Hinds when Robinson hired her to lead the Tigers.

Now, with the immediate future of the women's basketball team looking so bright, it is playing this season for a coach whose future is only uncertain.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Jackson State women's basketball: A cloud hangs over promising season