TRANSCRIPT | Coach Chris Beard talks about his Rebels’ team ahead of Vanderbilt game: ‘I really like these guys. I respect all of them. They want to win, it’s just a matter of trying to play our best when it matters most’

OXFORD, Miss. — Ole Miss head coach Chris Beard met with media Wednesday to talk about the season thus far and the upcoming game vs. Vanderbilt Saturday. The Rebels are in the middle of a bye week that comes after last Saturday’s 81-71 loss to Mississippi State.

Here’s everything Coach Beard said Wednesday:

Question: The players with high-level (sports) siblings, is there something different about them, competitive wise, or maybe just growing up with that urge to compete? I have an identical twin, so I don’t know. Do you feel like that at all?

Coach Beard: Yeah, I think so, for sure. Pedulla grew up with all those brothers and sisters playing in the driveway, and. Ju Ju’s brother just going down the line. Matt Mooney was one of our best players. He had a very competitive brother baseball player, if I’m not mistaken. But, yeah, I think Dre and his brother are pretty close. I don’t know if they played together in high school or not. I’m curious about that. I’ll ask him today.

Question: From your perspective, how have you seen them respond in practices since Saturday?

Coach Beard: Respond, yes. Ultimately, the response has to be on the floor. You know, next game out. To me, the response starts long before you hit the practice floor. Just kind of body language and the feel and mood around the program. So that starts as early as, like, what’s going on in the team text, are guys popping in on their off days. What’s going on in that weight room? But I’ve said it before, I really like these guys. I respect all of them. They want to win, it’s just a matter of trying to play our best when it matters most. And so this is where we are right now. This is the stretch run. This is mid-February, as we always call it. And then leading into March. But our players, their hearts are in the right place, period. I think they would be the first to tell you, too. It’s just, it’s time to start playing better. And in basketball, it’s literally sometimes like we’ll have four guys doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing on any possession. Then one guy gets out of whack, maybe a mistake, maybe lack of effort, maybe playing tired. And at this level in this league, at this stage, at this time of the year, one guy can kind of get the engine off tracks. But no, our players, I would say yes, they responded, we’re halfway through this week. You know, we practiced, what is today, Wednesday? We practiced yesterday. We practiced again this morning. So we gave the guys two complete days off, Sunday or Monday. And then the plan was to try to have two good days of practice. Got another session today, and then we’ll kind of gauge the guys’ legs tomorrow. So tomorrow could be physical, could be mental, could be a little of both.

Question: What do you make of the job that Mark Byington has done your one at Vanderbilt, especially kind of entering the league when the league has pretty much been as tough as it gets in a while. And then secondly, just the early evaluations of Vanderbilt what challenge do you feel like they’ll probably present the most? And is there anything to kind of draw from that as far as comparison?

Coach Beard: Yeah, I think a lot of basketball left here, but you could certainly state the case that coach (Byington) should be in contention for the national Coach of the Year. You know, you take the Vanderbilt job, to my knowledge, not one player on their team was on their team last year, or at least I know that’s accurate in terms of rotation players. Eight or 9 transfers he got from the portal, then one freshman who’s contributing to their team. So, I don’t think there’s a better job in college basketball this year at this point, right here with five games left, than coach and his staff have done at Vandy.

Question: After that loss, Pedulla said he felt like you guys hadn’t really played your best since the second half of the Kentucky game. Did this week sort of feel like a needed reset in that regard?

Coach Beard: Yes, and I think when when you say something like that, understand we won two road games against teams that really were playing kind of fearless — call it nothing to lose, just on edge. So like I said, after that game at LSU and South Carolina, these are good wins, period. There’s no asterisk next to it because somebody’s record is or isn’t what people think it should be. But I think what Sean was referring to is just the consistency of the game. You know, we got ten, four-minute games. In the last several games, there’s a couple of those four-minute games we want back. You know, like I think the last game we had a 13-4 run and a 17-4 run, in those games. You take out those runs, you cut them in half and maybe the scoreboard looks different. So, I would say it’s consistency of the 40 minutes, trying to create our own runs ourselves where we can get a couple kills on defense. Maybe the basket opens up for us a little bit, get a timely offensive rebound, make some free throws. Then on the defense, get multiple stops, cause some turnovers. Not saying we’ve been playing bad basketball, but it’s not our consistent basketball that we need to be successful in this league.

Question: You said you gave some thought to bye weeks and stuff. You don’t get control over that, obviously. But after thinking about it, do you like it now or would you have rather had it a couple weeks ago?

Coach Beard: I like it now. Just like I’m sure any coach would like it now, just because the physical rest and we’ve got guys that are banged up. I’m not so much in the mental deal. I actually respectfully disagree with guys, even on our staff. The season gets long and all this. Well, no, it’s like this is this is what it is. It’s like I explained to the guys yesterday, you know, like, if you want to eat, don’t complain about everything that’s on your plate. And, if you if you want to be a part of this and you want to be relative and you want to be a team that can make a run in March, then what do you think February is? You know, this is the time where, yeah, it’s demanding, but this is what you want. And trying to remind the guys that you signed up for this. To my knowledge, no, player in our team’s family made them play basketball. Nobody’s saying, ‘hey, this is your only path in life.’ It’s actually quite the opposite. We’ve got bright, intelligent dudes in that locker room that could succeed in anything they chose to. But what they chose is basketball. They’re going to try to make a living playing this game after college basketball. So with that just becomes the responsibility of doing what you said you want to do. And so, just trying to get the guys to understand that, find that joy this time of year, that competitiveness, that kind of swag. We all understand the urgency of the moment. We all understand what we’re playing for. But at the end of the day, it’s a game. And, just reminding guys, you know, we always take these guys back to high school. References to, you know, like everybody on our team played in a high school district where there was a few games where the game was over before the game ever started. Then there was that one game on the schedule, or maybe 3 or 4 games where, man, we’re playing the other best team. Those are the ones not only you got up for it, but you got excited about it. And so playing in the SEC, every single game is one of those games. So just trying to get the guys to be in the moment and understand this is what you want. You have a chance to play at this level on this stage for high stakes. You know, let’s don’t forget that. These are the ones you’re going to remember years from now.

Question: Chris, you talked about the physical status of your team. Just how has this week been for Matt Murrell?

Coach Beard: Yeah. Just rest. Just the ability to rest the body. When I say that, I don’t mean that he’s, you know, hanging out, watching TV all day long. It’s a commitment for Matt and others, including the guy that was just sitting next to me, Dre. You know, these guys are in the training room early in the morning throughout their lunch break, afternoon. They end their day with more treatment. So, um, still a lot going on in their 24 hours, but just the ability for Matt just to take several days off here to rest the wear and tear of the body, we hope is going to going to help him.

Question: Do you get anything out of the TV broadcast of a game like Vandy-Kentucky tonight, or do you kind of wait and watch the game film, coach film, if you will, to kind of break down things that you might be able to utilize on Saturday.

Coach Beard: Me personally, I’ve got a couple TVs where I work, and so the game will be played kind of live, but I’ll be working on something else as well. And then after the game, when I can watch it without the commercials and breaks and all that, that’s the way that I do it.

Question: What have you seen out of (John) Bol’s development? I know he’s gotten some playing time, but in these practices between games at this stage of his first year?

Coach Beard: Yeah, with John, it starts just with the physical standpoint — gaining weight, maintaining it, getting stronger, getting more athletic in terms of foot speed and his balance and things like that. And, he’s doing a really good job. Uh, John Bol works on game days. He works on the day before games just constantly. His player development is equally important to the next game on our schedule. And John’s done a great job of embracing that. John Bol had his best practice of the season yesterday. And so, you know, with John, it’s just going to be about him running his own race. We have the same expectations, or maybe even higher than we had when we recruited him. We all know that for some people it happens a little quicker than others. But John’s a player development guy and he’s developing on track or maybe a little bit faster. You know, the next step is going to be game reps. And he’s right on the fringe. You know, he got in the game the other day, impacted the game with positive contribution. He’s a part of every game plan we have coming in. I know that’s hard. It’s really hard. But what we tell John all the time in front of the team, and John knows it himself, too, he’s really, you know, he’s not gauging his success based on today. He’s thinking about the future. It’s the physical aspect of of getting stronger and more balanced and things like this, and he continues to work on his game.

Question: Kind of a weird question, but you talked about it. What are good signs in a team group chat, especially when you’re coming off a loss or something? What do you what do you want to see in that?

Coach Beard: Everybody contributing. Nobody hiding, the balance of the professionalism and the reality and the truth-telling of what’s going on. But then also the balance of ‘let’s enjoy life a little bit,’ too. You know, for everybody’s personality to kind of pop up on that deal on a day to day basis. And ours has been good. The guys have, obviously, meetings and relationships in their own text thread that we’re not on there, and I don’t want to be on that. I can only imagine. I probably can’t understand half of it anyway with the lingo and stuff like that today. Then we have one where everybody in the program is on. So, you know, communication in the program happens different ways every day and what you don’t want is a quiet team. I mean, a quiet team is a team that’s not going to be successful in March. You want a team where after a win, you’ve got some joy, but you’ve also got some reality. And then after a disappointing game, you want that same thing. You want to see the reality that everybody’s on the same page, but you also want to see that, ‘hey, this is a game. We’re blessed to be playing it. We’re blessed to be at Ole Miss.’ You can never forget that. You know, we’re all really fortunate. In the darkest day in college basketball, we still get to play and coach college basketball. And so I think reminding the guys of that, reminding myself, reminding the staff is an important thing that we try to do in our culture.

Question: When you had (former Texas Tech and current Orlando Magic player) Mac McClung, did he ever dunk over a car in practice?

Coach Beard: Not a car, but but we saw some crazy stuff, man. It was crazy. Oh, man, the stuff Mac would do kind of pre-practice and post-practice would always kind of get me out of my comfort zone. We would have a basketball tip off in those days, not quite Midnight Madness, but kind of like we do here at Ole Miss. And, my thing was, I know everybody wanted to see Mac do that, but every time Mac would jump up there, hang up in the air for four seconds and stuff, you know, from a coaching standpoint, you’re like, man, is this smart? Is this safe? Mac was the ultimate competitor. I know that some of his identity now has become the dunk contest and all, but if you know Mac, that’s not Mac McClung. Mac McClung is not a dunker. Mac McClung is a basketball player that has a passion to probably play as long as he can. I would predict Mac might be one of those guys when he’s done with the NBA, he’s playing overseas when he’s 46 years old. Mac’s a basketball player. He’s a competitor. I see a lot of those same qualities in some of the guys we have on this year’s team. At the end of the day, they’re just ballers and social media and all this portray an image of a guy, but the Mac McClung, I know he’s a basketball player. You know, he’s the guy that after practice, wanted to play pickup. When when practice was going well and competitive, he was the one always telling me, ‘Hey, coach, run it back, run it back.’ He’s just a guy that loves basketball. He’s very, very competitive.

Next Up: 

Ole Miss travels to play Vanderbilt Saturday. Tipoff is set for 2:30 p.m. and the game will be broadcast on the SEC Network.