STARKVILLE — Beside maybe wins, there’s not much Mississippi State men’s basketball coach Chris Jans would rather bestow on his players than confidence — in all its facets.
“Confidence in themselves. Confidence in the system. Confidence in their teammates,” Jans said Monday. “That’s the area that for me, if I could grant a wish to all of my guys at this point in the season, that would be it.”
Winners of seven of their past nine games, the Bulldogs indeed seem to have their confidence back. Mississippi State (19-10, 7-9 Southeastern Conference) is coming off a win over No. 24 Texas A&M on Saturday in Starkville, beating the Aggies 69-62 at Humphrey Coliseum.
That confidence dates back roughly a month, when an overtime win against TCU snapped a five-game losing skid.
But the Bulldogs’ next game might have been just as important.
Mississippi State went to South Carolina on Jan. 31 and handled the Gamecocks with relative ease, pulling away to a 66-51 win at Colonial Life Arena.
It was MSU’s first road win since Dec. 11 at Minnesota.
“We needed to get one under our belt, knowing we had a bunch more,” Jans said. “We needed to get that confidence.”
Mission accomplished.
Mississippi State beat Missouri four days later in Starkville, then won at Arkansas a week after that. With Saturday’s win over A&M, the Bulldogs went from out of NCAA tournament contention to — at the moment — a projected No. 11 seed in the Big Dance. Joe Lunardi’s most recent prognostication Monday even had MSU avoiding a play-in game entirely.
That could change significantly should Mississippi State fall in its second go-round with South Carolina (10-19, 3-13 SEC) at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Starkville. The Gamecocks represent a Quad 4 game on MSU’s résumé, and should they pull an upset, they’ll deal a big blow to the Bulldogs’ postseason chances.
With the confidence Mississippi State has, that appears unlikely. MSU has been playing better basketball since the start of SEC play, particularly on offense.
“We still have struggles shooting the basketball, especially from 3, but I think that if you look at us, we’re just a little better offensively in terms of playing to our strengths,” Jans said. “Our point totals have gone up a little bit over time.”
That’s partly due to offensive opportunities created by what KenPom.com rates as the country’s fourth-best defense.
“When we’re doing that, then that’s when we’re really clicking,” Jans said. “When we get those runouts and easy baskets created from our defense, that really helps our offensive look and numbers as well.”
Neither the Bulldogs nor the Gamecocks have much time to prepare for Tuesday’s matchup. South Carolina is coming off an 85-45 shellacking at the hands of Tennessee.
Both games the two schools have played have been Tuesday night contests, toward which Jans is admittedly ambivalent.
“If you ask me on Sunday, it’s the worst thing in the world,” he said. “But if you ask me on Wednesday, I’m in pretty good spirits about it.”
That was certainly the case Feb. 1, the day after the Bulldogs’ big road win in Columbia.
It was a victory that helped Mississippi State seize some much-needed momentum.
“I think you’ve got to earn that confidence by winning on the road and showing each other that you can do it,” Jans said. “I think that helped us have opportunities later in the conference season to be able to get more of the road wins.”
Getting some of those road victories, including in Fayetteville and Oxford, have put the Bulldogs in a position to defend their home court Tuesday night.
Now they’ll do it with the confidence Jans sought for them.
“At the end of the day, that’s the thing that you want so bad for your players and for your team,” he said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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