Head coach Chris Jans talks Utah, Josh Hubbard and rebounding issues

Mississippi State returns to the road Saturday and will face another tough test against Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Bulldogs are coming off another disappointing setback, this time to San Francisco, and also saw Josh Hubbard suffer an ankle injury early in that outing.

On Wednesday, head coach Chris Jans met with the media to discuss the next challenge among other topics:

Q: What are some of the factors with the inconsistency so far with the frontcourt players?
Jans: Consistency has been an issue for our whole team, not just for our frontcourt, specifically Q (Quincy Ballard) and JMar (Jamarion Davis-Fleming). Jmar is a freshman and we’re not playing him like one. He’s had some great runs, great games, and just didn’t play well against San Francisco. But he’s got nine games under his belt and he continues to get better.

When you have anyone that is fairly new, the trajectory isn’t (straight up). There’s so many ups and downs that come with it. But he is going in the right direction and just had a little bit of downward trajectory that particular day. But we haven’t lost any confidence in him whatsoever but our team is that way, just inconsistent.

Q didn’t start more for matchup purposes than anything else in that particular game. We were waiting to see who they started and we tried to match minutes with other bigger guys to make it a more beneficial matchup for him. I know he didn’t start the game before either. He missed some baskets and some shots early around the basket that he’d been making. It’s almost like he lost a little confidence that way.

As a staff, we got to continue to tinker and toy with how we can but him in a better position. He’s proven that if he gets the ball deep enough, he can score the ball. He’s got beautiful touch and for whatever reason, it just didn’t go in for him that evening. Then he had some blockout areas down the stretch that hurt our chances of coming back and trying to win. They both did. Certainly, we are trying to correct them and make sure they don’t happen again.

Q: Do you have an injury update on Josh Hubbard?
Jans: Josh is obviously a hard-working kid. Fortunately for us and our trainer is a hard-working guy, as well. I know they are going to be working around the clock to try to get back as soon as he can. But I don’t have a time table.

Q: If Josh can’t play, what’s the confidence in the other players to pick up that slack?
Jans: Well, I always feel like when you have time to prepare for something like that, it is a little bit easier than when it happens a couple of minutes into a game. So we will probably be more prepared if that ends up being the case that way. At halftime we made some major adjustments, especially on the offensive end, that proved to be some good ones. We scored almost twice as many points in the second half than we did in the first half.

It was kind of like ‘is this really happening’ type of deal for some of the guys on our team and I think with even some of the coaches. It was obviously a big blow, a big punch in the gut at 17:33 of the first half to lose someone that is so valuable to your team. But that happens in sports. You got to be able to move on quickly and figure it out. Like I said, we should have more confidence now knowing we just played 36 (minutes) and some change without him and got better as the game progressed. So we got an idea of what we need to do.

Q: With Jayden Epps and Ja’Borri McGhee having to play together more now, is there anything you are looking for in the future?
Jans: Jayden, talk about consistency, I think he’s been very consistent the last three or four games on both ends. I told the team this. His buy-in to being assignment correct and be on it, defensively, has been a shot in the arm for us in a positive way. He’s really been working on that end of the court. He’s really paying attention. His motor is going. He’s doing a good job of guarding his own man and then being in position when he’s not guarding his own man and trying to get the scout into the game. It just seems like his buy-in is off the chart right now.

Then on the offensive end, he’s found his groove a little bit in how he scores. He’s been doing that. He’s been scoring the ball at a pretty good level and efficiently, as well, in terms of his shot attempts and actual points that he is receiving. So I am happy for him and for us to be more successful, he needs to be a big part of it going forward.

Then Ja’Borri, obviously, he had a pretty good game. He was 6 of 9 and had six defensive rebounds and showed some athletic plays and showed a little bit of fire. He just needs to build from that and be consistent that way. We can rely on him for certain things every single night and he understands that. We’ve been talking to him about that for awhile now. He’s kind of our multi-dimensional guy out there where he can play the two and even if we go small ball and play some three if we have to for defensive reasons. He’s played the one prior to coming here and played a lot at the one this summer and fall. So he has developed into a utility guard for us that can do a little bit of everything.

Q: What are your thoughts on this Utah team and how big is it for your team to have 6-7 days off in between games?
Jans: It comes at a pretty decent time that way. Trying to get healthy, obviously, with Josh and others. It is typical finals week and those books become an even bigger priority than they normally are. I think I may have mentioned it to you guys or the radio. In this world we are living in now, sometimes all of us can forget they have those responsibilities in an amount of time. We can all look back at our days and what it’s like to go through finals week and be part of a basketball team.

So we are trying to give them their time and space to take care of their academic responsibilities and finish the semester on strong note that way. We have some other guys that are banged up besides Josh. So having some time off this week is beneficial for us.

Utah is a very well-coached team. Their coach is a first-year coach there but he’s not new to coaching basketball. He played there, was an unbelievable player and has been in the NBA. His teams are very well organized and they run a very good offense. So they are going to be a handful. We’re not playing them on campus. We are playing them in an NBA arena, which will be a new experience for this team. But certainly, it will a lot like most of these neutral-site games we play other than the Tupelo one, it will be a decided difference in the fans that are at the game. So we’ve already been down that road and understand what we are walking into.

Q: It is a thin line wanting Josh back but making sure he healthy first. Your thoughts on his value to the team?
Jans: We’re not going to out anyone, regardless who they are and what their projected worth is to our team, on the court that is not confident in whatever injury they had and try to put them in harm’s way. It is never my call. It is going to be the doctor/trainer/player’s call when it comes to something like that. Josh will let us know when he is ready and he will have to go through a process like most of the guys do in terms of being non-contact first and get out there and get moving and get confidence in how he can move before he throw him into the fire and play a physical 5-on-5 type of work. Hopefully it is sooner than later.

Q: Rebounding has been an issue so far. Is that a particular area you are focused on right now?
Jans: Rebounding is something we’ve been talking about a lot and disappointed in the results on Sunday. That was as big a priority as we had going into the game. We had to control the glass on both ends and we didn’t. We got to be a team that does a lot of work on the ground from the time of the rise of the shot until the ball is secured by whoever. There is a lot that goes on with the court and we break it down to them to the finest detail.

We’re just not where we need to be in that department. In my opinion, we are losing games because of it. If you look back and watch the games closely, it’s not the first stop as much as it is what happens when the ball is shot. It’s not one person. It’s just a missed assignment there, a missed check there, not enough grit here.

Again, it’s not one guy. I can’t sit here and say it’s the frontcourt or the backcourt because they’re all involved. We just haven’t put it together well enough yet. We’ve got to help them better. We got to figure out a different scheme, rebounding-wise, to possibly put us in better position. We know how I believe in that facet of the game and it usually proves to be a big reason behind why a team wins or loses basketball games. For us right now, that is an area I will continue to stress and try to figure out and try to help this team get better.