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State set for final homestand at the Hump starting with LSU on Saturday

3rupauk8_400x400by:Robbie Faulk•about 9 hours•

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Chris Jans (Photo by Mississippi State Athletics)

As the final couple of weeks of the regular season winds down, Mississippi State is trying to do what it can to get back playing good basketball.

It’s been a rollercoaster for a whole lot of teams in the monster SEC this season and the Bulldogs haven’t been immune to that. Chris Jans and his squad are still firmly inside the NCAA tournament with three games to go in the regular season and that’s a welcome change from the last two seasons.

While State (19-9, 7-8 SEC) feels good about its tournament chances this year, the Bulldogs are working for seeding and the team wants to be playing its best in March. It’s had Jans emphasizing ways the team can improve each day.

“I know where we stand with our metrics and I need to know where my team is,” Jans said. “We’ve been talking about it for weeks about our metrics and our stock and how important it is.”

MSU perimeter defense must improve for tournament run

The Bulldogs are somewhere around the six or seven seed range in most projections, depending on what person fans choose to follow. Improving the seeding for both the Big Dance and the SEC Tournament is the goal over the next two weeks.

To be playing at a higher level, the Bulldogs are going to have to find a way to improve on the defensive end. Jans has struggled to play his style of basketball on the defensive end with this year’s team and State has given up 10 or more made three-pointers in 11 games this season.

There’s no coincidence that State has all nine losses coming in those games and the worst of them came on Tuesday night. When the Bulldogs traveled to No. 7 Alabama, the home team rammed home 22-of-45 threes and poured on 111 points. It followed up an 11-of-26 afternoon in a loss to Oklahoma on Saturday which made for a frustrating two-game turn after knocking off two top 25 teams in Ole Miss and Texas A&M.

“We did a deep dive in that week off and we did tweak somethings defensively that, for a couple of games, helped us. In the last game, it didn’t work,” Jans said of the Alabama contest. “A lot of that has to do with who we played, their style of play and where we played it. We’re not happy with the outcome and how it went down, but a lot of it had to do with how well they played. You could see it developing right in front of us.”

The Bulldogs will try to start a new winning streak when they host the final homestand at Humphrey Coliseum this year. It starts on Saturday against LSU as the Bulldogs host the Tigers for a 2:30 p.m. start on Saturday afternoon (SEC Network).

The Tigers enter at just 14-14 and 3-12 in league play and they’ve been on the verge of upset losses this season. For a team with nothing to lose, it makes for a dangerous challenge that the Bulldogs will have to command.

“They have a nice combination of what you would like in a team in terms of having a guard who can really score the ball, and Cam Carter with his ability to just go get buckets in a variety of ways,” Jans said of LSU. “They’ve got size around the basket with athleticism and shot blocking. (Daimion) Collins and (Vyctorius) Miller are bigger guys who play the majority of the minutes.

“They are athletes that can protect the rim. They can run. They can score the ball. They are improving. In watching the tape, they are improved with their skill set. They’ve got wings that can slash and shoot and run the court. I know that their record isn’t what they would like it to be.”

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