Chris Jans breaks down what Mississippi State did well defensively vs. Ole Miss

Mississippi State scored a massive resume win this week when they held on at home to beat rival Ole Miss by a dozen. Afterwards, head coach Chris Jans credited a better defensive performance in the second half for the victory.

Really, Jans’ complaints from the first half didn’t center around his team’s ability to guard the ball or hold the Rebel offense in check. Rather, MSU just kept handing Ole Miss easy scoring opportunities with turnovers of their own on offense, leading to fast break buckets, plus an uncanny number of offensive rebounds allowed.

“Yeah, obviously, we had too many turnovers at halftime. That was not good,” shared Jans. “They were scoring, I think they scored 14 of their points, if I’m not mistaken, off our turnovers and they had, you know, a bunch of offensive rebounds. I think our defensive rebounding percentage was somewhere around 53%, so they were getting almost half the rebounds back and we were very similar that way.”

Both teams would finish the game with 15 offensive rebounds — which is in the typical ballpark for an MSU team that’s strong on the glass, but at the same time, 15 allowed is far above the normal rate for the Bulldogs.

“We just just didn’t feel like we were finishing the job that way,” Jans added of the rebounding. “You know, we were scoring off turnovers. We had some decent possessions first shot, but they got too many, you know, second chance opportunities. I don’t know how many they scored, but it just deflates you and it takes the air out of the defense a little bit when that happens.”

Luckily, Mississippi State was still able to nab the victory, since their typical dominance on the glass simply wasn’t there in the rivalry matchup.

“Certainly, you know, we play try to play physical. We try to get on the backboards, you know, we’re 44 per tonight, which is a big number and that was a big part of our game plan.”

The Bulldogs ultimately shot 10% better from the field and rode a pretty large advantage at the free throw line to seal the win.

Going forward, MSU is looking in pretty good shape for the NCAA Tournament. With the Ole Miss result, that’s now four straight wins and an above-.500 SEC record at 7-6 with an 18-8 mark overall, including three Quad 1 wins and four more in Quad 2. That should be enough for a tourney berth, so long as the Bulldogs don’t collapse down the stretch.