Head coach Chris Jans talks South Carolina, Josh Hubbard and slow starts on the road

Mississippi State (15-4 overall, 3-3 in SEC) faces another SEC road challenge on Saturday as the 14th-ranked Bulldogs face a familiar foe in South Carolina (10-9 overall, 0-6 in the SEC). Back on January 4th, Mississippi State opened the SEC slate with a dominating, 85-50 win over the Gamecocks at Humphrey Coliseum.

On Thursday, Mississippi State head coach Chris Jans held his weekly press conference and discussed South Carolina among other topics:

Q: How tough is it to get your team’s attention against a team you dominated a few weeks ago?
Jans: You hit the nail on the head. That is what we’re going to have to fight is the approach and the psyche, individually and certainly collectively of this team having to go through that. We are happy we won weeks ago when we did open SEC play but this game, which we all know and have been around long enough to understand each game is its own little chapter in your season. What happened in that game really is fairly irrelevant weeks later.

Everybody gets better as the season progresses. You could argue that it could hurt you if you are mental because you take your foot off the gas. If you just look at their record at face value as a young person and you beat them the way you did, the obvious to the coach is we are going to have to fight that all through preparation. You would think having an older group, like a lot of us do now with the portal, they will understand that. We will see.

We haven’t been through that yet and this is our first go-around having to face someone twice. They are snake-bit almost. Against Auburn they had a chance to win the game and I think Auburn was ranked 2nd at the time and then last night with Florida being 5th, leading for 39-plus minutes at home. One of those games you relive with one little possession and one bounce and the game changes and the outlook changes. So for us to get our guys to have the right mentality will be a big deal.

At the same time, why wouldn’t they? We’re coming off a loss. We need to try to find a way to win another SEC game. Certainly on the road makes it more difficult.

Q: Starting games on the road has been an issue. What can you do to fix that?
Jans: Yeah, as a staff we’ve talked about it since the Tennessee game. We need to fix it from the top down. We start well at home most of the time in SEC games. But for whatever reason, and it is a small sample size and against Vandy I think we were fine coming out of the gates so it’s three games. But we definitely don’t want it to continue. You let the crowds get into the game and as much as you like to think it is not a distraction and your team is mentally tough and can handle those types of things, in reality it is why the home teams win more than the road teams. That is part of the reason.

If you get off to a good start it builds your confidence and you keep the crowd at bay a little bit and it gives you a better chance. Certainly that would be something that we will be talking about going into Saturday’s game.

Q: You talked Tuesday about not getting enough paint touches early in the game. How important is that for this offense?
Jans: You got to give a lot of credit to (Tennessee) and they had a lot to do with it some of our struggles. We didn’t help ourselves as much as we needed to. We were definitely capable and able but we were not willing to be tough on offense and be physical on offense to put them on their heels a little bit. We were like an eggshell on offense. We just stood on the outside of it. We didn’t get down to the softer part and didn’t get downhill enough, talking about paint touches.

We just didn’t put enough pressure on them, defensively. I’m going to keep saying it and they had a lot to do with it. They did a very good job in guarding the ball and off the ball they were extremely physical not letting us get to our spots and to where we were trying to go. It’s not like we didn’t know that they were going to do that going into the game. It is easy to talk about it and prepare for it but it is another thing to do it against a team like that. Hopefully we will learn how we need to be more aggressive in terms of getting downhill and getting more ball reversals.

And that is another thing. For whatever reason, when they scored a goal, too many times in the first half we didn’t respond. We walked the ball up the court and that is not what we’re trying to do. They made that decision on the court and that is not acceptable. We got to try to get the defense on their heels by us pushing it back to them and allowing us to flow into the offense rather than having to scratch against a team that pressures the way they do. Then when your first couple of catches where you want, you are kind of behind the eight ball and that happened way too much.

Q: What makes South Carolina more dangerous now they they’ve come so close to wins?
Jans: Everybody is dangerous in this league. If you are not hooked up and ready to play your best, you are going to get beat. I don’t care if it is at home or on the road, and I don’t care what the records say. Everybody in the league talks about how daunting it is to look at what’s next. People talk about our schedule but everybody’s got it. USC, going into SEC play, had the hardest schedule ranked in the country. You look at theirs and it is for everybody.

So we talk about the respect factor and understanding that they are hungry, starving for a win. They’re coming off No. 2 and No. 5 losses at home. Certainly we can talk about how the game unfolded here so they will have plenty of motivation. Like I said earlier, we better, too. We are 3-3 in the league and want to get to 4-3 and we want to win another road game. And it is hard and it won’t be easy. What we do today and tomorrow, I think will directly impact the outcome of the game, certainly physically and probably as equally important is just our mental approach the next couple of days.

Q: What do you think your team did well the first game against South Carolina and Collin Murray-Boyles and what needs to happen this time to slow them down?
Jans: I have as much as respect for him as anybody in the league. I love the way he plays the game. I don’t know him personally but the things I’ve read and saw, he seems like a good kid and a good leader and is all about their program and his teammates and their coaches. He is what is good about college basketball. Again, I don’t know him but I would imagine he is not happy about (that first meeting) and he is going to do everything he can to make sure we see and feel as good as of a player he is.

It will be a challenge. We were very physical with him, bumped him off his spots, ran people at him. We just tried to never let him get to where he wanted to go. We never let him get comfortable and take him out of his normal game. But it will be different and more of a challenge at their place.

Q: What are you seeing from Josh Hubbard on film with his offense?
Jans: When I watch film, I make clips of all of our players – Josh, Cam (Matthews) and all the way down the line. Obviously, there are only so many hours in the day. We watch film as a team and then sometimes we watch extra film with individuals on different days of the week. For me and with Josh, it’s the whole game. People want to talk about scoring and shooting and all of that. For me and the way I look at it, it is getting him to understand regardless of what is going on with the offensive end, it can’t influence the other facets of the game.

As everybody wants to focus on and that’s going to be the case for years to come, outside of our walls for the most point, is the scoring and percentages and assists and things on the stat sheet. I know he is trying to be a complete player. It’s just everything else. Don’t let something else affect your energy on that end or your effort or being on top of your gameplan. That is always a struggle for everybody. That is an area where I think he can get better and can mature as a two-way basketball player. It is something I am on him about.

Regardless of what is going on down there, you got to be on top of your defensive gameplan. You got to be checking your man out. You got to be rebounding, getting the ball and putting pressure on the defense. There’s so many other facets of the game. We are working with him like we do with all of our players. But that is what I want from him, not letting it influence the other end of the court. In terms of how other teams are defending him, I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone has come up with a solution. Certainly he is circled on everyone’s report and he’s getting the best defender and he is getting a lot of physicality. But it was that way a lot last year, too.

Q: We’ve talked about the progress of KeShawn Murphy. What is his ceiling and how much better can he be?
Jans: I thought the Tennessee game, the size and the weight of their bigs gave him some issues. He didn’t quite get his feet underneath him in some of the possessions, not just with the ball but without it. He wasn’t as balanced on both ends of the court and it affected him. It is still his first year with major minutes so it is still a learning curve for him. Knowing him and knowing the work he has put in, he will learn and grow from that experience and be better next time.