Chris Jans: Mississippi State must work on ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ mentality

Mississippi State fell narrowly on the road against rival Ole Miss, and after the game, head coach Chris Jans credited his guys for staying competitive but regretting their carelessness with the basketball.

MSU turned the ball over 15 times Tuesday night vs. just seven committed by the Rebels. A closer margin in that department quite literally could have flipped the outcome, which is why Coach Jans was asked about the giveaways in the postgame presser.

“I’ve talked to you guys locally, it’s become our Achilles heel,” the Bulldog coach commented. “Some games, you know, it doesn’t show up. But when we have issues, it usually goes back to that. I’m trying to figure it out. We do a lot of different things to try to put our guys in position to make better decisions with the basketball.”

Jans then explained why his team’s aggressiveness defensively and on the glass sometimes bleeds over in a negative way to his team’s ability to execute offense without being overly aggressive or out of control.

“I think we’ve got to work on that Jekyll and Hyde,” Jans said. “We play defense in a certain mindset and we crash the glass with a certain mindset, but sometimes that carries over into how we run offense at times and we’re a little too aggressive and try to make some passes that aren’t there.”

Despite the extra turnovers that may have helped cost Mississippi State the game, Jans was thrilled with the team’s effort to battle back from a doubl-digit second-half deficit to nearly pull off the win.

“But I’m proud of my guys. A lot of teams could have easily walked away from that situation with the crowd and then the score, and there was no giving up,” Jans continued. “Our huddles were awesome. They were together, they felt like we were going to have a chance to win the game throughout the second half and they stuck with it, they stayed with it, they figured out a way to get the balance of the game back where we had a legitimate chance to win.”

On SEC road trips, you’ll take those positive signs, even if not all the contests come out as wins.

“As a coach, when you’re in a hostile environment, you know, you’re proud of your guys when you do that,” Jans said. “I just told them, I said: ‘We’re a good basketball team that, in my opinion, is on its way to be a great basketball team. we’ve got a chance to be a really good team.'”

MSU is now 3-5 in league play and headed towards the midpoint of an 18-game league slate, where Chris Jans has confidence his team will continue to perform well against what is certainly the easier half of their schedule.

“We’re heading to the turning point of of the SEC play and we’ll see how it unfolds. But I like where our mental state is and we’ll see if we can get some wins on the other side,” Jans said.