STARKVILLE — Vic Schaefer knows the challenges that come with fielding a young team in the brutal Southeastern Conference.
Especially at a program with a track record of success, Schaefer noted, players with little experience at college basketball’s highest level are thrown into the fire with little preparation.
“All they see is Mississippi State on our chest, and they’re coming after us,” he said during Wednesday’s media availability session. “That’s not fair to our freshmen. It’s not fair to (junior college transfer) Yemiyah (Morris). But it’s reality. It’s not fair to some of our kids who didn’t play a lot last year but that are playing a lot this year. But that’s reality. They’ve now got to defend what’s been done here in the past years.”
Schaefer’s Bulldogs teams have accomplished plenty recently, of course. An Elite Eight berth in 2019 following back-to-back appearances in the national championship game further solidified Mississippi State’s place in the SEC and among the country’s top programs. But the players who orchestrated that success — including Teaira McCowan, Anriel Howard and Victoria Vivians — have moved on, and a youthful team now faces a daunting task.
“We had our nonconference season,” Schaefer said. “Now we’ve got the 16-game gauntlet that’s better known as the Southeastern Conference schedule.”
Mississippi State (12-2) largely took care of business during its nonconference slate, dropping a game to a tough Stanford team and experiencing a hiccup at home against West Virginia.
Now the Bulldogs host Florida (9-4) at 7:10 p.m. Thursday to kick off what Schaefer said is a stretch of “16 rival games.”
As SEC opponents go, a home contest with Florida isn’t too dangerous a conference opener. The Gators were picked 12th in the conference, while Mississippi State was projected for a third-place finish. Last year, Florida won just eight games, and the Bulldogs beat the Gators 90-42 in Gainesville in the two teams’ lone matchup.
But graduate guard Jordan Danberry, who scored 12 points in that win last January, knows this year’s Florida team isn’t the same level of pushover.
“I know from what we’ve watched on film so far that they like to attack the basket,” Danberry said. “They have some good players, some bigs inside that can get up and down. We’ve just gotta guard them, really. They have a lot of motion offense, so we just gotta pressure them, press them and attack off our defense.”
Guard Funda Nakkasoglu, who led the Gators by averaging 16.6 points per game last season, has graduated; so has Delicia Washington, Florida’s second-leading scorer from a year ago.
Lavender Briggs (13.8 points per game), Kiara Smith (13.4) and Zada Williams (11.8) all average at least 10 points per game, but the Gators don’t boast many impressive wins thus far.
Florida hasn’t beaten a Power Five opponent this season, and its highest-profile victory came by three points against Xavier on Dec. 20.
Schaefer knows his team will be ready for Thursday’s game in the friendly confines of Humphrey Coliseum, though he pointed out all the things Mississippi State still needs to improve on.
“Are we ready? Yeah, these kids will be ready tomorrow night,” Schaefer said. “Playing at home, it’s your home opener — gosh, I’d be disappointed if we’re not ready to play. Are we where we’re gonna be in six weeks, two months? No, I don’t think so at all.”
The Bulldogs are still looking for depth at the center spot behind Jessika Carter, Schaefer said, with Morris and Promise Taylor competing to spell the sophomore at the position.
“The bottom line is you win with guard play in the SEC, but if you want to win championships, you’ve gotta have those bigs,” Schaefer said. “That continues to be a work in progress for us.”
Cutting down turnovers, too, has become a focus for the Bulldogs, and Schaefer said he will continue to stress ball security with Mississippi State’s guards.
Those improvements are developed in practices that can last longer than and have more intensity than actual games. For the Bulldogs’ younger players, redshirt sophomore guard Myah Taylor said, that learning experience can be critical.
“I feel like the way we practice is sometimes so much harder than what a game’s gonna feel like, but I just feel like we go extremely hard in practice and prepare them as much as we can in practice so it can roll over to the game,” Taylor said.
After all, Danberry pointed off, Mississippi State can’t afford to take a single possession off against its formidable conference opponents.
“The mistakes that we make in games in the SEC, they’ll capitalize off that, so we’ve just gotta teach them that it’s a small margin for error,” she said.
Schaefer knows well by now the high talent level in the conference, which he compared to the Triple-A level in professional baseball: players who will all be competing at the highest level at one point or another.
“These people, they’re coming to beat you and beat you as bad as they can beat you,” he said. “You’re going against the best coaches in the country. You’re going against the best players in the country. … You’ve got to get ready and got to be prepared, and it’s hard for especially our young kids to understand that.”
So far, Schaefer said, that process is going well. But starting Thursday, he’ll find out where his team really stands — and how it can improve.
“I think we’re a long way from where we might be in the next six weeks,” he said. “I think we’re gonna be so much better, hopefully. And that’s not to say we’re not good right now. I just think the more this team plays and practices, the better they’re gonna get.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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