Above all else, Chris Jans’ teams are built on toughness, and a big part of that is success on the boards.
So after Mississippi State was outrebounded by a smaller South Carolina team in Saturday’s 68-62 road loss, the Bulldogs (11-3, 0-1 Southeastern Conference) are stressing physicality on the glass as their schedule difficulty increases this week.
“It’s talked about a lot daily already, so that was very disappointing,” Jans said Monday. “Prior to the game, I wouldn’t have thought that would have been the problem. We were trending in the right direction. At the same time, so were (the Gamecocks). … We were aware of that and tried to get our guys to understand that they were coming.”
With star post player Tolu Smith back, MSU is at full strength and armed with one of the SEC’s strongest and deepest frontcourts, having added Jimmy Bell Jr. in the transfer portal as a reinforcement. But Smith, who dealt with foul trouble all day long against South Carolina and picked up his fifth personal in the final minute, had just four rebounds in 20 minutes, while Bell had none in 19 minutes of action.
Bell entered Saturday leading the conference in rebounding with 9.2 per game before the goose egg dropped him to fourth. Smith finished second in the SEC with 8.5 boards per game last year and had nine in 19 minutes in his season debut against Bethune-Cookman. It was the Gamecocks, though, who finished with a 15-8 edge in offensive rebounds, and the hosts took advantage with 16 second-chance points to the Bulldogs’ six.
“We just went too long, too many times in that game without getting second-chance opportunities ourselves. It wasn’t lack of effort. It was some lack of mental discipline,” Jans said. “They need prodding and pushing and direction and motivation, just like we all do at different times. They’re great kids, but they both know they need to do better. Jimmy Bell, I love him to death, (but) there’s no way that he can play the minutes he played and get zero rebounds.”
MSU has regressed to the middle of the pack in the SEC in overall rebounding, and the Bulldogs will need to emphasize crashing the glass heading into home games this week against Tennessee and Alabama, who checked in at No. 5 and No. 6, respectively, in the latest NET rankings.
“I don’t know if we can come up with more ways than we already have of trying to coach and teach it better,” Jans said. “We are very accountable when it comes to that department every single day with our video study (and) with our emphasis on it in practice. We’ll continue to figure out ways to get them better, but the way this team is constructed, we have to be a good rebounding team in a league that’s got a bunch of good rebounding teams.”
Scouting Tennessee
The No. 5 Volunteers (11-3, 1-0) played the 14th-strongest non-conference schedule in the country, picking up big wins over Wisconsin, Syracuse and Illinois. Their three losses came consecutively in late November, all against ranked teams — Tennessee fell to No. 1 Purdue and then-No. 2 Kansas at the Maui Invitational, then lost on the road to a North Carolina team that has since entered the top 10 in the ACC/SEC Challenge.
Now in his ninth season as Tennessee’s head coach, Rick Barnes has led the Volunteers to five straight NCAA Tournaments, and this year his squad boasts the SEC’s best field goal percentage defense.
Tennessee is third in the conference in overall scoring defense behind MSU and South Carolina, and Jans pointed to 5-foot-9-inch guard Zakai Zeigler, a two-time SEC All-Defensive Team honoree, as the Volunteers’ leader on that end of the floor.
“They have great pride individually in guarding the ball and not giving up angles and not giving up penetration,” Jans said. “It starts up front with Zeigler, and he sets the tone. He’s as good an on-ball defender as you’re going to see in college basketball, and he’s relentless and he’s in big-time shape. He can do it for 35, 40 minutes if need be.”
Dalton Knecht, a graduate transfer from Northern Colorado who led the Big Sky Conference in scoring last year, is now the Volunteers’ leading scorer with 15.1 points per game, but it was their big man, Jonas Aidoo, who led them with 24 points and 10 rebounds in Tennessee’s 90-64 win Saturday over previously-unbeaten Ole Miss. Zeigler also had a big game offensively with 17 points and a season-high 10 assists.
The Bulldogs dropped both meetings with the Volunteers last season, falling in an 87-53 blowout in Knoxville in early January before suffering a 70-59 home defeat to Tennessee two weeks later. Wednesday’s game will be the teams’ only matchup this year.
“They’re maybe not quite as big around the basket as they were last year, but they’re still plenty big and they’ve got plenty of depth,” Jans said. “Offensively, they present some challenges because they play different. They play a little old school with a lot more screening and cutting than you see in today’s game. … It’ll be a different prep week than normal, but we’ll have to play our best.”
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