OXFORD, Miss. — Granted, it was to Mississippi State, but that 10-point loss Saturday wasn’t the bitter end for Ole Miss this year.
Or, at least, it shouldn’t be.
“Ultimately the response has to be on the floor. Next game,” Rebels coach Chris Beard said Monday afternoon. “To me, the response happens long before the practice floor, with body language and the feel and mood around the program. That’s starts as early as whatever goes on in the team tex, guys popping in on their off days and what’s going on in that weight room.”
In other words, he’s putting it back on the players. The mental aspect may be just as big as the physical part. It’s a long season and no mid-week game is coming at a good time.
If the players can quit listening to the doom-and-gloom noise after losing to the Bulldogs. Yeah, everybody hates losing anything to the school down south, but now would be a pretty good time to just develop some sort of low-grade amnesia.
And move on. They have to go to Nashville to face Vanderbilt. This year in the SEC just about anybody can beat anybody else on any given night.
“We have guys that are banged up,” Beard said. “”I’m not so much in the mental deal. I respectfully disagree with guys even on our staff. The season gets long and all this. Well, no sh*t. It is what it is.”
That’s about as blunt as a coach can deliver it, but it’s true. Every team in any sport reaches a point where the coaches have done all they can do. Sooner or later, the players have to execute and perform.
‘I told the guys (Tuesday), if you want to eat, don’t complain about what’s on your plate,” he said. “If you want to be part of this and relative and a team that can make a run in March, what do you think February is? This is the time where, yes it’s demanding, but this is what you want. I reminded the guys that you signed up for this.”
In other words, he had the direct conversation every basketball coach has with his team sooner or later. It happens nearly every season with every team.
“To my knowledge, no player on our team’s family made them play basketball,” Beard said. “Nobody told them that this is their only path in life, it’s the opposite. We have bright and intelligent guys in our locker room that can succeed in anything they choose to. They chose basketball.
“If they choose to make a living on this after college basketball, there’s a responsibility of doing what you said you want to do. I’m trying to tell the guys to have some joy this time of year, competitiveness back. We all understand the urgency of the moment and what we’re playing for, but it’s a game at the end of the day.”
Beard finally got around to just saying it was on the players. The Rebels’ staff doesn’t coach turnovers and missing shots. They are on par with the top coaches in the SEC and that means the best 64 teams in the country.
“Communication in a program happens different ways every day, but what you don’t want is a quiet team,” Beard said. “A quiet team is a team that isn’t going to be successful in March. You want a team that after a win, you have some joy, but also reality. After a disappointing game, you want that same thing. You want to see that everybody is on the game page, but also realizing that it’s a game.”
All of that’s fine and well, but it comes down to whatever happens on the floor. We’ve heard the coachspeak before.
The proof comes what happens the rest of the month. Not what happened last Saturday.
