Chris Jans reveals D.J. Jeffries will miss time with injury

Mississippi State has now lost back-to-back games following their lopsided 99-67 loss to Alabama on Saturday night. But as they look to get back on the winning side of things on Wednesday when they host Georgia, they’ll have to do so without starting forward DJ Jeffries.

Jeffries left Saturday’s game in the first half following an awkward landing after logging 11 minutes in the matchup. And during his press conference Monday, Mississippi State head coach Chris Jans announced that Jeffries will miss some time for the Bulldogs after sustaining a knee injury on Saturday.

“He has a knee issue and he’ll be out for a while,” Jans said. “I’m not exactly sure but it won’t be long term, he definitely will be out though.”

Jeffries started all 34 of the Bulldogs’ games last year and all 22 of the team’s games so far this season. But unfortunately, it looks like his streak will be broken this week after injuring his knee against the Crimson Tide.

He’s averaged just 6.3 points per game this season after averaging 8.8 points per game last year, mainly making his impact and presence felt on the defensive end of the floor. Ranking 11th in defensive rebounding percentage, 19th in steal percentage, and 24th in block percentage in the SEC during conference play this season according to KenPom.

Jeffries is one of the Bulldogs’ most experienced players on the roster, spending the first two seasons of his career at Memphis before transferring to Mississippi State ahead of the 2021-2022 season. In the entirety of his collegiate career, he’s appeared in 137 total games and started in 111 of them.

Shawn Jones Jr. will likely start in the place of the injured Jeffries moving forward, who played in a career-high 30 minutes in his relief versus Alabama where he scored a season-high 10 points while also staying active on the defensive end of the floor with six rebounds and two steals.

Jans’ news comes just one week removed from his announcement that guard Andrew Taylor will no longer be with the team moving forward and that forward KeShawn Murphy is still working his way back to being on the team as he continues to miss time for personal reasons.

Murphy still hasn’t returned to the lineup since the Bulldogs’ SEC opener against South Carolina, but hopefully, he will come back soon for a Mississippi State squad that could surely use all the help they can get with nine games remaining in the regular season.