SEC grind begins Saturday for Mississippi State
Mississippi State opens SEC play Saturday at South Carolina and the Bulldogs will do so with their rotation now in tact. This past Sunday marked the return of All-SEC center Tolu Smith, who had 16 points and nine rebounds in his season debut against Bethune-Cookman.
Smith missed all but one non-conference game due to an offseason foot injury. So it goes without saying that head coach Chris Jans is excited to have all of his pieces back healthy again.
And considering the strength of the SEC, it will be needed and then some for the Bulldogs, who enter conference play with an 11-2 record. State collected key wins over Northwestern, Washington State and Rutgers in November and December. But State also had disapppointing losses to Georgia Tech and Southern University.
“What we’ve done is not gonna go away, good or bad,” Jans pointed out. “It changes though because of the analytics and the NET, and that changes daily. But it is out of our hands and all we can do is watch and pay attention, which I do already. The loss to Southern is not going to be a determining factor of how our season unfolds. We’re going to have so many opportunities the rest of the season, especially when you are in SEC play.”
While most fans were pleased to see just two losses with Smith sidelined, that wasn’t Jans’ mindset entering the season. Nor was the 11-2 record regarding his expectations.
“I thought we were going to win every game,” stated Jans. “It’s not lip service. We have a lot of good players, working on our culture every single day. And we lost two of them. That wasn’t the expectation. It wasn’t hey, let’s win enough until Tolu comes back. It was let’s keep the train moving and win every game. That is our approach. It is going to be our approach as long as I am the coach here from the staff to the players to the managers.”
In Smith’s absence, helping keep the Bulldogs afloat was the play of senior center Jimmy Bell. The former West Virginia transfer has started all 13 games this season and has averaged 9.3 points and a team-best 9.2 rebounds a game.
With Smith back in the fold, Jans and his staff will eventually figure out the minutes shared and rotation in the frontcourt, which also includes sophomore KeShawn Murphy at the four and the five.
“I haven’t figured it out yet,” said Jans of the frontcourt rotation. “It’s going to be a work in progress. We’re going to have to figure it out in practice and certainly in the early (SEC) games. But it is a good problem to have.
“People ask me now that Tolu is back and how’s Jimmy going to handle that. I didn’t think about it because he is such a great guy and he’s been encouraging Tolu and excited for Tolu. His mindset is hey, now there is another guy that is going to keep wearing them down, keep pounding them like I do.”
In order to keep building an NCAA Tournament resume, the Bulldogs will have to shore up a few issues when the rugged SEC schedule opens. Turnovers have been an Achilles’ heel for State this season and entering Saturday, the Bulldogs are averaging 12.8 turnovers a game.
“Our biggest issue right now from a 10,000-foot view is just our turnover percentage,” added Jans. “We just can’t get it under control. It’s not one thing either. It’s a different place here, a different place there, different guys there. We do tons of things about it in practice and we still haven’t been able to be consistent with just valuing the ball, making great decisions. It’s a problem right now and we have to try to fix it.”
State and South Carolina are set for an 11 a.m. tipoff on CBS on Saturday. The Bulldogs will then open up the SEC home slate next Wednesday when No. 5 Tennessee pays a visit to Humphrey Coliseum.
