Chris Beard analyzes where Ole Miss stands early in conference play

After a 13-0 start to their season, Ole Miss has seen their first slips of the year by going 2-2 to start conference play. Chris Beard sees the full picture, though, when it comes to the overall outlook on his Rebels.

Beard assessed where his team is as they dive further in the second half of their season during his postgame press conference following their 89-80 loss at LSU on Wednesday. As of now, he thinks his team is still working to improve with 14 games left to go in the SEC.

“Yeah, I think we’re like every other team in the country. We’re still kind of a work in progress,” said Beard. “This is mid-January. It’s the fourth round of the 18-round fight tonight.”

In Beard’s opinion, Ole Miss’ loss in Baton Rouge was evidence of the development that they’re still trying to work through. It stems from an inconsistency that he felt affected their play on both ends in separate halves against the Tigers.

“First half? Way too many turnovers. Give LSU credit. They have a pressure defense. They lead this league in steals for a reason. We just didn’t take care of the ball,” Beard said. “Second half? We corrected that. I think we played a one-turnover half the last 20 minutes of the game. But, while we were doing that, our defense didn’t help our offense.”

“I think, in the first half, our offense didn’t really help our defense. In the second half, when we got our offense going a little bit, our defense just couldn’t get stops when we needed them,” said Beard. “Give LSU all of the credit. It’s a good team, talented players, a veteran team. Coach (McMahon) is doing a great job here in year two.”

Ole Miss finished the non-conference schedule with an unblemished record. However, since the start of conference play, the Rebels have dropped two of four games with both coming on the road at Tennessee and at LSU. While they handled Florida and Vanderbilt with relative ease in Oxford, the Volunteers hammered them in Knoxville while the Tigers pulled away from them late as they scored 54 points on 55.2% shooting in the second half.

You don’t get to 15-2 without being a pretty great team to this point of the season. Still, in order to be better in the Southeastern Conference, Beard says improved consistency is going to be the key through the rest of January and into February.

“I think we’ve had some good moments this season,” said Beard. “I believe that we can play with any team in the country. But we’re really striving for consistency. Tonight, you kind of saw that.”