Chris Jans 'certainly concerned' about Mississippi State's recent skid

No. 22 Mississippi State lost to No. 3 Florida 81-68 on their home floor on Tuesday night, dropping the Bulldogs to 5-6 in SEC play. They’ve now lost three of their last four games dating back to last month.

After the game, Bulldogs head coach Chris Jans attempted to place a pulse on Mississippi State’s recent skid. He revealed that the outcome vs. the Gators surprised him quite a bit and hopes it doesn’t snowball any futher.

“I’m certainly concerned,” Jans said. “I’m a little shocked because we had a great practice yesterday. We were coming off a very tough, well-earned road victory. The vibe was really, really good. Shootaround was one of the better ones we’ve had. They were excited. Togetherness was showing.”

Mississippi State led Florida 34-33 at the halftime break. However, the Gators’ Denzel Aberdeen nailed a 3-pointer right out of the gates in the second half, which led to Florida scoring the first 17 points of the second half. By the time they scored another point five minutes into the half, they trailed by 16 points.

Jans said that Mississippi State lacked urgency down the stretch which led to the second-half collapse.

“I just didn’t expect it,” Jans continued. “In the first half, we were frustrated with ourselves offensively. I thought we set the tone and had a good defensive first half. We rebounded the ball very well in the first half, and that was a big goal for us. 

“And for whatever reason, we were just out of sync in terms of all five guys when we’re going into defense to offense and what we’re trying to run and what we’re trying to do. We just weren’t all where we needed to be every time. It wasn’t one guy. It was just one time it was this guy; one time it was the next guy. It was frustrating for us because we just didn’t feel like we were giving ourselves the best chance to take advantage of what we were trying to do against their defense.”

The Bulldogs’ schedule doesn’t let up from there, however. They’ll turn around and head to Oxford on Saturday for a bitter in-state rivalry matchup against No. 19 Ole Miss. 72 hours after that, they’ll host No. 8 Texas A&M in Starkville. They’ll travel to Oklahoma after that before rounding out their February schedule on the road against No. 2 Alabama.

Tip-off between Mississippi State and Ole Miss is set for 6 p.m. ET on Saturday live on ESPN2.