Chris Beard looks for signs off the court when determining how Ole Miss responds to setbacks

Saturday was a tough game to swallow for Chris Beard and the Ole Miss men’s basketball team. Losing by 10 points to Mississippi State stunted a lot of positive postseason momentum.

Beard was emotional after the game, sending all five starters to the podium to answer questions from the media. A first under his tenure at Ole Miss.

With the Rebels having its bye week now and a week between games Beard gave the team Sunday and Monday off before returning to the practice gym on Tuesday.

Beard has seen a response from No. 24 Ole Miss in the days since Saturday. While he looks for that true response in game-form, which will be in Nashville on Saturday at Vanderbilt, he also has off-the-court signs he looks for with how his players handle both a win and a loss.

“To me, the response starts long before you hit the practice floor,” Beard said on Wednesday when meeting with the local media. “Just kind of body language and the feel and mood around the program. That starts as early as like what’s going on in the team text. Guys popping in on their off days, what’s going on in the weight room.”

Maybe not the most conventional answer by a head coach, but it is one that is aware of the way the world is now.

Group text chains is the lifeblood for how players and teammates bond off the court beyond the practice gym inside the Touhy Center and those 40 minutes on the floor inside the SJB Pavilion.

Beard looks for those signs of leadership from his veterans and that every person on staff within the program is engaged. This is both after victories and defeats.

“Everybody contributing. Nobody hiding,” Beard said when asked what he looks for in that group text. “The balance of professionalism and the reality and the truth-telling of what’s going on. But then also the balance of let’s go enjoy life a little bit, too. You know, for everybody’s personality to kind of pop up on that deal on a day-to-day basis. Ours has been good.”

Ole Miss is now in the stages of preparing to resume the final five-game stretch of the regular season.

Starting with the Commodores on Saturday then the Rebels (19-7, 8-5 Southeastern Conference) will travel to No. 1 Auburn on Wednesday before the return home to Oxford on March 1 against Oklahoma. From there it is games against No. 6 Tennessee and at No. 2 Florida as final tune ups before the SEC Tournament in Nashville.

A tough stretch but one with opportunities to get Ole Miss back on track for a top seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Rebels are nearly locks to get into the 68-team field but Saturday’s game would have gone a long way in achieving that goal.

Now, Beard is left with making sure his players are in a good place to close out February and a mindset for March.

“What you don’t want is a quiet team,” Beard said. “A quiet team is a team that’s not going to be successful in March. You want a team where after a win, you got some joy but you’ve also got some reality. Then after a disappointing game you want that same thing. You want to see the reality that everybody’s on the same page but you also want to see that, ‘Hey, this is a game.’ We’re blessed to be playing it, we’re bless to be at Ole Miss. You can never forget that. In the darkest days of college basketball, we still get to play and coach college basketball.”