TRANSCRIPT | Chris Beard after Ole Miss win over A&M: ‘The one stat that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet is heart and poise and togetherness and just fight’

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Ole Miss men’s basketball marched into College Station, a place the Rebels had never won, and defeated the Texas A&M Aggies, 71-68, in front of 12,610 fans. After the game, head coach Chris Beard met with media.

Here’s everything Coach Beard had to say: 

Coach Beard: Yeah, just another one-possession SEC game that came down to the end. First of all, a lot of respect for A&M, what (head coach) Buzz (Williams) has done here and what he’s built, super impressed with their atmosphere. 

Trivia fact here. It’s kind of showing my age here a little bit, but I was on the bench the first game ever played here in this arena. I was an assistant coach at North Texas for Vic Trilli, and we played, I believe, (A&M) Coach (Melvin) Watkins. I could be wrong on that. So, the very first game and just a great atmosphere tonight, and I know Buzz and the coaches before him, you know, in my mind or my age bracket, kind of starting with (former A&M head coach) Billy Gillispie have built something special here. So, great environment, tough place to play. So I know Buzz and the guys have worked hard on creating this home court advantage. 

In terms of the game, it’s not not really a stat-sheet game for us. We wanted to rebound with A&M. Uh, we never talked about outrebounding them, but we wanted to compete with them. And we did that in the first half. We went we went toe-for-toe in the first half with the rebounds. I think that’s why we were in the game, despite eight turnovers in the first half. But we rebounded early. It kept us in the game. The first four minutes of the second half was the biggest segment for us. We were able to get a little bit of separation and obviously we needed that cushion late. 

In the second half, our offense really helped us. We only had three turnovers in the second half against an aggressive defense. We did not rebound well in the second half, but the one stat that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet is heart and poise and togetherness and just fight. 

So I told the guys at halftime this isn’t a stat-sheet game. This is just every possession, go out there and fight and scrap. You’re playing against a really good team. So I was just proud of our players. We had some individual performances tonight. Brandon Murray had eight rebounds. Great minutes coming off the bench and other things as well. You know, two guys get eight rebounds — which eight defensive rebounds against A&M is like 12 or 13 against anybody else. So, we just had some good moments. JuJu Murray, when we needed a basket a couple of key times where I didn’t really want to call a time out because I anticipated being in a late game where we needed those timeouts, Ju Ju made some good individual plays. So just proud of our players. It was a good win for us. 

Question: Chris, You’re back in Texas. Does this mean a little bit more to you being about 60 miles from McCullough High School as well? Not far in terms of almost kind of coming home here.

Coach Beard: I mean, the next game on the schedule is the most important. But when you get to come to your home state and play a game, obviously there’s some people — two of the three of my daughters were here —and teammates from McCullough were here. I had my athletic director from Angelo State here. So, yeah, I think it’s just like when a player comes home, there’s just something extra in that game. And denying that wouldn’t be truthful. So just the people that were here that I got a chance to see last night. And I’m a big fan of Cooper’s barbecue. I think I’ve taken five teams to Cooper’s as a head coach, and it was good. Mississippi has great food. Not good. Great. But there’s just something about Texas barbecue. I like the brisket moist, and that’s the deal at Cooper’s, as you guys know. And the cobbler…we had players saying, ‘I don’t like cobbler.’ I said, ‘I didn’t ask you if you liked cobbler. I told you to taste that cobbler.’ Because, you know, when you get the bite with crust in it, you guys know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, then do you even understand where you live? So the cobbler at Cooper’s. That made the win special as well.

Question: How much did slowing them down in transition in the second half slow down their momentum and what they were trying to do shooting?

Coach Beard: Yeah, I can’t speak for Buzz, but what I can say is their three-quarter pressure. 1-2-2. You know, it bothered us a little bit. We had a game plan that we did not execute against it. And on the other side, you’d have to ask Buzz that we did want to change the defenses. (A&M’s Wade) Taylor’s a special player. Their rebounders are special players. It’s a hard team to guard. So I was confident that we couldn’t just make it a vanilla game. Like, we can’t just come down and play our defense against their offense. We had to mix some things up. We had some fortune tonight, but you always do in a game. Got some misfortune and some fortune. But I did think that our changing defenses, I can’t speak for how they feel, but it at least kept us aggressive. It at least gave us an objective on a possession to see if we could pull it off.

Question: This is the first win for the Rebels over A&M in College Station. Ole Miss was zero for six coming into this game. So what does it feel like to get a win here?

Coach Beard: Yeah. That means something to me because I have so much respect for the coaches that came before us. You know Kermit Davis, he won in about every gym he ever coached in his career. And certainly AK, thinking about the history of being in the same conference as them. Maybe AK came down here a couple times. So, yeah, that means something. We’re trying to do things at Ole Miss that haven’t been done before. And if you’re going to go down that highway, you’re going to break some records or do some things that you haven’t done before. So we’d like to play in a Final Four, and Ole Miss has never done that. So, any time we check one off the list, it means we’re moving in the right direction. Appreciate you guys. Thank you.

Next Up:

Ole Miss returns home next for a rivalry game with Mississippi State in the SJB Pavilion on Tuesday, January 30 at 7:30 p.m. on the SEC Network.

Evelyn Van Pelt

Evelyn has covered sports for over two decades, beginning her journalism career as a sports writer for a newspaper in Austin, Texas. She attended Texas A&M and majored in English. Evelyn’s love for Ole Miss began when her daughter Katie attended the university on a volleyball scholarship. Evelyn created the Rebel Walk in 2013 and has served as publisher and managing editor since its inception.