Mississippi State men’s basketball head coach Chris Jans had a simple message for his team at the start of the week: “Play harder.”
The team suffered its worst loss of the season last weekend, a 32-point blowout at home against No. 15 Vanderbilt. The Commodores came out hot with a 22-4 run through the opening four minutes of the game, and the ensuing 36 minutes were a mixed bag from a defeated MSU squad.
That wasn’t the case on Wednesday in Baton Rouge.
The Bulldogs raced out of the gate against LSU, leading by as much as 27 points in the first half to set the tone in an eventual 80-66 win over the Tigers.
“We kept it simple after the Saturday game,” Jans said on MSU radio after the game. “Obviously, that wasn’t a great point for us, and now you’ve got to go on the road for two, so we kept it simple in terms of what was important. We had a game plan and switched up some ball-screen coverage to try to generate more off our defense, but the biggest thing we talked about was just competing harder. We had two goals: compete harder and win. I said if we accomplish the first goal, I can’t promise you, but I’m pretty confident we’ll accomplish the second goal.”
It still wasn’t back to normal in terms of scoring from MSU’s most prolific shooters. Josh Hubbard led the team with 15 points on 4-12 shooting, but was one of three players with three or more assists on the day. The improved ball movement fueled an offense with four players in double digits and a combined 10-21 hit rate from beyond the arc.
The intensity dropped off in the second half as the Tigers tried to close the gap, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the early deficit.
“We came out of the gate and got off to a really good start. In the end, it’s not the ending you want in a game like this, but when you’ve got that big a lead on the road, it is what it is,” Jans said. “I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about that with our team. I may not even watch the last four minutes, how about that?”
Jans’ joke about the closeout didn’t take away from the focus on application and how a high-effort approach was needed after the loss to Vanderbilt. It’s been one of the keys to his teams in his first three years in Starkville, and it’s a quality he’s still looking for in this year’s squad.
“For me, it’s something ingrained in me as an athlete, where I was coached, how I was coached, both in high school and college,” Jans said of the work-rate part of a game. “It’s been a big part of the DNA of the places I’ve been a head coach at. We’ve had tough outings where it didn’t feel like we were competing hard, or hard enough, and that’s unacceptable.”
“That was a really big part, honestly. It’s the reason why we won the game today,” MSU forward Sergej Macura said of the “play harder” approach. “As we saw, our starting five went out, they kicked their behinds, as we can say, they started off on a great, energetic step. That was basically our lead into the game, from the first second to the last.”
Macura recorded a 10-point, 10-rebound double-double for the Bulldogs in the win, hitting 5-9 from the floor, and helped the Bulldogs outrebound the Tigers 43-24.
“The coaches said before the game, (rebounding) is a big part for playing harder, like we talked about. We gave it everything,” Macura said. “I know I’ve been close to a double-double the last couple games, so I keep on going with that rhythm. The other guys were all physical under the basket, so we’ve been emphasizing it the whole week coming up to this game, so that was big for us.”
MSU has two days before its next road game, a trip to face Mizzou in Columbia on Saturday, and the team is hoping that a simplified, high-effort approach will help them find new life in the back half of SEC play. It’s no secret that the team needs to rack up some wins to restore hopes for postseason play, and a Quad 1 road win at LSU could be a new starting point for them to make that happen.
“We’ve had a lot of serious conversations about that in our team space, and it can get you through,” Jans said. “It’s got to be something that’s in your back pocket when the ball isn’t going through the hole, or you’re sloppy and have some turnovers. It’s something you can count on, and we haven’t been in tip-top shape that way… Hopefully, this is something that can propel them forward.”
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