Everything Chris Beard said ahead of Ole Miss’ trip to the SEC Tournament

Ole Miss basketball is headed to the SEC Tournament this week looking to build momentum for March Madness. 

The Rebels (21-9, 10-7 SEC) are the 8-seed and tip off in Nashville on Thursday at noon CT on SEC Network. The league’s Top 8 teams all secured first-round byes. Ole Miss will face the winner of No. 16 South Carolina and No. 9 Arkansas.

The Rebels would draw No. 1 Auburn should they advance.

Second-year head coach Chris Beard met the media on Tuesday to preview the days ahead. Here’s everything he had to say.

ON SEAN PEDULLA’S ALL-SEC SELECTION

Beard: First of all, the individual stuff, it’s all team awards. You got to be on an upper-half team in the league to get a guy on the all-conference team. If you win the league, you always get a couple guys. So Sean will tell you the same thing. Those got team success written all over them. Just like the best player in the league on the worst team never gets the MVP and that kind of deal. It’s a team sport. 

We’re proud of Sean, we’re happy for him, but I think Sean’s the first to tell his teammates, and he already has, no big deal. We all came here to win, team stuff, not individual stuff. With Sean, we’ve strived for him to be the best version of himself this year. He was already an established player at Virginia Tech. 

I just wanted him to be his most aggressive self here and try to expand on his game in some ways and I think he’s done that. Juju (Murray) has done a great job this year giving us point guard mentality, but also staying true to who they are, which is natural scorers.

ON THE SEC TOURNAMENT

Beard: Our thing in March has always been kind of the same. We’ve had a lot of success this month with different teams based on a plan we’re trying to execute. For us, it’s pretty simple. It’s two words: ‘Be us.’ We’ve earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. We’ve been more than competitive and got some great wins. We beat a lot of teams that will be in the tournament. We beat a lot of teams that have a chance to (win it all).

Back to just kind of reminding the guys as March begins, postseason March begins. Let’s don’t forget what got us here. Be us now for us. We need to be the best version of us. I can imagine if you’re coaching an undefeated team going into March and everything’s kind of gone your way then you could just say, ‘Be us for us.’ We have to say ‘be us’ and put a little bit of an asterisks next to it.

“The best version of us (is) the team that early on competed with Houston and Illinois.”

The team early on that beat BYU and competed with Purdue and beat Colorado State. Beat Louisville. That team. The team in the SEC that has road wins, including at Alabama (and) has quality home wins against Tennessee. Reminding the guys this is what got us here. This is who we are. This is our identity 

In postseason play you just simply want to be us. What you don’t want to do is have guys try to do things they haven’t tried all year or have the team play in a different way than we have all year. It’s always been that simple to describe, but challenging to get done. But I believe if we bring our best game, Ole Miss’ best game on offense and defense, we’ve seen throughout the season we’ll have a chance to be really competitive this month. 

ON THE LOCKER ROOM 

Beard: Surely there won’t be complacency. We have nothing to be complacent about. I would say that, and there’s other coaches that can say the same thing. It’s not coach speak, but I think it is an important part of building a program that you’ve got to state the obvious and keep building the program. I think in a lot of ways the guys in our locker room feel like we’ve been disrespected. 

It took us a long time to get the Top 25. We’re one of those teams with one loss we’re out. One win, we’re back in. I know there’s other teams that are worthy. We’re certainly not comparing ourselves to anybody else. But I would compare our resume to anybody in the country. 

I’m not sure in a week where you beat Tennessee, who’s a projected 1-seed, maybe 2-seed in the tournament, you beat them at home. And then you lose on the road to Florida, a 1-seed by everybody’s talk, regardless of what happens the rest of the season. You just fall so far down in the poll. It’s things like this that we’re just showing our team.

“We’re not certainly focused on a poll, but we’re absolutely focused on getting some respect.”

If you want respect, go get it. We’ve done this a million times. We had to earn some national respect way back in November by beating BYU — a team that has NBA players (and) everybody knew was going to the tournament. We more than competed against Purdue. In our mind, it was a game that we had a chance to win. So we’re right back here in March. 

So, complacent? No way. We’re still the team trying to prove that we belong in the arena. Interesting season, I’ll let you guys do the work on that. No bad losses, a lot of wins against NCAA tournament teams. It’s very well possible when the bracket comes out our resume is a team where the only games we lost this year on the scoreboard were to teams playing in the national tournament. That’s a startling fact. Did we get the wins we needed to earn a great seed? I believe so, both on the road and at home. 

We competed in the SEC and got 10 wins. A conference that some people, most people, are saying right now might be the best conference in the history of college basketball heading into the tournament. 

Ultimately that will depend on what happens with teams in March. We have a motivated locker room. We have a lot of guys that still have a chip on our shoulder. There’s teams in the Top 25 final poll that we beat, that have similar records, that we have more tier-one victories. These kind of things is what I think fuels the chip on our shoulder. 

“Ultimately it’s all talk.”

We have to go out and win our first game on Thursday. But we are a team fueled by a lot of things. As we build the program for Ole Miss, these are the things we have to overcome. We have to overcome people’s perception. One hundred and fifteen years of Ole Miss basketball, we’re proud to be the 10th team that have played in the national tournament. 

We’d like to be the second team that ever won the Southeastern Conference Tournament. (Andy Kennedy) and those guys, and Murph (Holloway), and Marshall (Henderson) did that. We’re playing for a lot this week. 

ON THE RECENT DEFENSIVE STRUGGLES IN LOSSES

Beard: Team defense starts with the individual pieces. Each player that’s out there, all five players have to do their job. We have to really play to our strengths. We have to improve our weaknesses. And then when you add the team aspect of it, there’s five guys out here. So now we’ve got to play together. 

You might get driven off the bounce, I’m going to be there to help you. You might need some help on that rebound. You’ve got him one-on-one, let me help this guy. It’s the individual piece of defense (and) everybody doing their job and five guys playing together, connected. It all starts with effort, attitude and body language. Some of our defensive mistakes, like every team in the country, is just effort. We talk about transition defense, if we’re not willing to run from A to B as fast as you can possibly run, then there’s not much to talk about, tactics-wise. The rebounding game, same thing. If you’re not willing to go hit your man, there’s not much we can talk about, tactics-wise. 

We’ve been a good defense all year long. We’ve been nationally ranked defensively most of the season (and) more competitive in the categories in the SEC. It’s an improved defense over Year 1. But now it has to show up in March, and it has to be the best version for us to have a defense that can make a run here this month. 

ON PREPARING FOR A TBD OPPONENT

Beard: We play the winner of the 12 o’clock game (Wednesday). The rules allow us to live scout this time of year, which is cool. Back in my small college, junior college, in NCAA Division ll, live scouting was a big part of what we did. Obviously, they have rules against us now, but now that we’re in tournament play, we’ll be able to have some staff members watch that game in person. What are you really picking up this time of year? Not much. Most coaches will make a couple of adjustments for postseason play, so hopefully we’ll be able to see those things with our own eyes. 

With our team it’s just kind of putting the week together with one extra day, valuing practice and rest. There’ll be a team tonight playing for a championship that’s playing the fifth game in five days. What’s more important? Momentum and having a chance to play the night before or the rest? That’s a coin flip. Everybody’s got a different opinion on that one. 

ON HIS PAST SUCCESS IN THE NCAA TOURNAMENT 

Beard: I appreciate the question. I mentioned it earlier today. It’s really a two-fold thing for us. It’s real simple. We want to be us, and we want to smell the roses a little bit along the way. So what we mean by that is we want to be the best version of ourselves. If you’re a good team like we are, that’s an at-large bid team, then we just want to remind the guys these are the things that contributed to us having a good season. 

These are the things that we’re gonna have to do to have a good season in March. It’s just be us on both sides of the ball (and) with our culture, our preparation and our process. 

I think people make a mistake when you try to make changes and you act different than you’ve acted all year. Obviously if you’re a low seed coming in and you’re a team that hasn’t had a good season then the whole ‘be us’ wouldn’t be it. Fortunately I’ve never been on that side of the coin. 

We’ve got to be us, the best version. The second thing is smell the roses. We want to have fun right now I mean guys make a lot of sacrifices to play meaningful games in March. Not much of a summer break, no Christmas break, no spring break, full-time student, academic responsibilities (and) athlete responsibilities. When you get here you’ve got to enjoy it a little bit.

“Think you make a mistake if you just go into total-business lockdown.”

Is this a business trip to Nashville? Yes, of course, but on the time outside of the business, we want to enjoy it. Whether it’s the team dinner, or the bus ride, or the victory celebration, or the film session, we want to enjoy these things. We tell our guys along the way, we want to play as long as we can in Nashville. We want to play as long as we can in the national tournament. Our terminology is kind of smell the roses along the way. Just urging our seniors to understand that this is their last moments in college basketball. 

We hope this thing extends all the way to April. But just kind of smelling the roses along the way. We’ve worked so hard to get here. We all understand the importance and the desire to play our best games. But you’ve got to have some fun along the way, too. That’s always been our model for March — be us, and smell the roses.

ON THE BENEFITS OF AN OLDER TEAM IN MARCH

Beard: I think there’s a relationship in college basketball, I’ve said it before, between experience and winning. Ultimately, when the ball goes up Thursday, none of that really matters. Any advantage or disadvantage we had is all up to preparation for the game. When the game starts, it doesn’t matter what the stat sheet says in the regular season (or) what the age on somebody’s birth certificate says. Now it’s gonna be about the team that plays best in that 40 minutes. But we hope that experience could be a factor. 

We’ve got some guys that have played in the NCAA tournament. (Davon) Barnes, Juju and Sean have all played in the NCAA Tournament. We have some guys that have played in the SEC Tournament. So yeah, we tap back on that. Some of the guys that haven’t played in these meaningful games in March we try to help them the best we can by explaining it to them the best we can what this stage is gonna be like.