Chris Jans breaks down what Mississippi State's schedule looks like around Christmas

The Christmas season is a time of rest for Chris Jans and the Mississippi State men’s basketball team, as he’s letting the players visit with their families during the upcoming break in games.

Pro sports have a stranglehold on Christmas day while college sports, especially college hoops, tends to break for a few days right around Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. That’s true for Mississippi State, who s rearing up to face Rutgers on a neutral court in the Gotham Classic in Newark, NJ, just two days before Christmas on the 23rd. But after that game, the Bulldogs get a break from live action until New Year’s Eve.

Jans is looking forward to a necessary break for these players.

“Yeah, we’ll go our separate ways for the most part when that game’s complete,” he said of the Rutgers matchup. “And then we don’t play until the 31st, so we still have a chance to have a nice break, which I’m a big proponent of.”

Jans went on to explain the importance of family time at this neck in the calendar along with the benefits of a few days of rest after several months of grinding it out every day.

“I think that’s where they need to be. They need to be with their families celebrating Christmas. And equally important from a basketball perspective is just to get away from it a little bit and and get off their their legs and just kind of rest their bodies and their minds and enjoy, you know, the holidays with their families.”

That Dec. 31 game vs. Bethune Cookman won’t be completely out of Chris Jans’ mind as he’ll be ready to go, whistle in hand and back at practice just a couple of days after the big holiday.

“But we’ll bring them back on the 27th, you know, that evening. So we’ll still have three and a half full days of of preparation for our game against Bethune Cookman.”

After that contest, MSU is getting shot out of a cannon straight into SEC play. They start the new year with a trip to South Carolina, who’s currently 9-1. After that lie home games vs. Alabama and Tennessee before another road trip… to Lexington, Kentucky… caps off the first two weeks of their SEC slate.

That’s about as brutal as it gets. These Bulldogs better hit the pavement running once they arrive back in Starkville.