TRANSCRIPT: Chris Beard on Rebels’ SEC Tournament Win over Georgia — ‘Our Guys Don’t Quit’

NASHVILLE — Ole Miss kept its postseason hopes alive Thursday night with a hard-fought victory over Georgia in the second round of the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament. The Rebels built a sizable second-half lead before weathering a late Bulldogs push to secure the win and advance to the quarterfinals.

After the game, head coach Chris Beard met with the media to discuss the team’s composure during Georgia’s rally, the “survive and advance” mentality guiding Ole Miss this week, and the resilience his players have shown throughout an up-and-down season.

Here’s everything Coach Beard had to say after his team’s win.

Chris Beard’s Opening Statement

We just wish Georgia the best of luck in the NCAA Tournament next week. Quality opponent. Mike does a good job all the time, every year. Great win for our program. Obviously, survive-and-advance mode for us, so we live to see another day.

I think the basketball — Texas yesterday, Georgia today — two of the best offenses in all of college basketball. We played probably three and a half halves of the best defense we played all year long. Kind of started yesterday with our defensive effort against a top-10 defense, and today Georgia, one of the highest-scoring offenses in the country.

I thought our guys were dialed in. First-half defense was about as well as it could be. Second half, like all good teams, we knew Georgia was going to get aggressive. A lot of our misfortune was self-inflicted. I just want to recognize the guys did a really good job the last five, six minutes of the game.

Obviously, Georgia had a lot of fouls to give at that point, so their defense was super aggressive. I thought, for the most part, we were really good with ball security in the last three or four minutes.

So again, wish Georgia the best. Really proud of our guys. We set this up as a four-team tournament. We won the first one. We’ll get back, get recovered as best we can and then tomorrow we’ll start the next four-team tournament.”

Q. Today your largest lead was 23 with 13 minutes to play. We saw the crumble, saw the falloff. What do you think prepared yourself and the team the most to finish strong?

CHRIS BEARD: That’s a good question. Definitely had some self-inflicted things during that — crumble is your word. I wouldn’t disagree with that. Give credit to the opponent. Georgia got super aggressive. The press heated us up a little bit.

I think in terms of our guys just having the poise, I mean, we’re just in the mode now where we’re trying to extend our season.

Fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way you look at it, we’ve been in some situations similar to this this season. We’ve been in almost every game. Just haven’t come through like we did tonight more times than not.

I think we relied back on some of our past experience. I think our coaching staff did a good job tonight during the storm, just kind of weathering it. We had some contributions from different players. Klafke came in, made some plays. Kezza finished the game. It was really a team effort that pulled it through for us.

Q. I saw when Travis was answering a question earlier, he talked about being nastier on the court. You nodded your head. What has that process been like?

CHRIS BEARD: Travis Perry is a sophomore in college basketball. Played a role last year at his previous school. The idea for him at Ole Miss was to play a bigger role.

Travis is not a soft player. He’s a physical guy. He’s a competitor. But in the game of basketball, there’s going to be plays and possessions where you have to play with that kind of strength.

We’ve been encouraging Travis from one day to initiate the contact, don’t run from it. I think tonight’s stat with him getting six rebounds speaks for itself. Obviously he took a big-time pop there on the flagrant.

No, Travis has got some nasty in him. It’s just kind of a deal where we’re trying to pull it out of him slowly but surely.

Q. Your team attempted a lot fewer threes than the first half. Did Cyril’s ejection have any influence in your dynamic going into the second half because they have fewer bodies, less bigs on the front court?

CHRIS BEARD: I think that would be more so a question from them. It appeared to me they were guarding the three-point line really well early. It is a strength of our team. We were having a hard time getting open looks. Got Travis loose a few times on sets.

In the second half, it loosened up a little bit. Whenever you’re playing against that kind of desperation defense, they had fouls to give. They were very aggressive. They were putting two on the ball. I think we had some timely three-point shots with the spacing.

When both teams got just tired during that two-minute stretch, I didn’t want to call a timeout because I knew we might need them later on with the press that Georgia is so good at.

That was some ugly basketball there for a while with all the fatigue. I think during that stretch, we were able to get some threes, as well.

Q. When you come into a tournament like this needing to win five games in five days, do you feel there’s maybe a chip on your shoulder going in? How do you feel your confidence grows when you win? There’s a much more realistic pathway to a championship on Sunday.

CHRIS BEARD: Our big thing is we’ve tried to tap into our NCAA tournament experience. We’re not viewing this any different. This is our survive and advance moment.

Like I said yesterday, and again earlier, everybody finds themselves in this position. It will start for 68 teams, starting on, what, Tuesday or Wednesday with the play-in games. That’s the mode we’re in now. Not a lot of conversation about winning this tournament to get a bid. We’re just trying to win the next game on the schedule. But we understand that we’re in survive and advance mode.

We started watching the Jimmy V Survive and Advance 30 for 30 last week. We watch about eight-minute segments throughout the day with our team, trying to get them to tap into this moment.

This is really where you don’t want to have any regrets. It would be nice to play your best basketball, but that’s not always possible. What we want to do is mentally just make sure we don’t have any regrets mentally to understand this is where we are, we’re trying to extend our season. No different than when we play in the NCAA tournament. Really we’re following that game plan this week.

Our NCAA tournament just came a week early.

Q. I remember you telling us last year how you knew very early on that that team was going to be very good, probably in the pre-season. Is there anything about this team that shows you they can probably make a run here?

CHRIS BEARD: Yeah, I think so, for sure. It’s obviously been a challenging season with a lot of adversity. I’m not really thinking about that now. But I never shy away from the idea of my biggest belief, the thing that I’ll always remember about this team, is that these guys have not quit. A lot of people that haven’t seen our play this year in person that are here in Nashville see that. Beginning yesterday against Texas, a really good team, today Georgia, an NCAA tournament team.

You see it. It’s not always pretty. We’re not perfect. But our guys don’t quit. You saw it in all different varieties today. The start, the defense, the lead, things are kind of falling apart on us. Zero quit. I will always respect that about this group of 15 players. It’s been an up-and-down journey. But these guys continue to play for Ole Miss.

I know I’m proud of ’em. I know our fan base is proud of ’em. That’s what I’ll always remember about this team.

We’ll have to have that same ingredient tomorrow. We’ll have to have some belief, some championship DNA tomorrow. I’m confident we’ll show up to play.

Q. Do you keep the process for preparing for tomorrow the same as yesterday? What are your keys especially with how Georgia plays?

CHRIS BEARD: We’re going to switch it up a little bit. We normally go back to the hotel to have that good meal, but tonight we’re going to go to Hall’s Steakhouse. James used to live in Charleston. The Hall brothers are friends of mine. It’s one of the best restaurants in the country.

We told the guys if we got it done tonight, we’d go to Hall’s all the way down to where Kez was hitting that last free throw that we really needed. From a coaching standpoint, do you talk to the guy? Do you not talk to the guy? Do you call a timeout? Do you tell him to get off the line? Do you trust the feel? To me, it’s always kind of a game-time decision.

But on that one, I did pull Kez off the line and I said, ‘Kez, look, big shot here. I really want that shrimp cocktail here in about 45 minutes.’

So shoutout to Hall’s helping us get the victory tonight. Shoutout to Kez stepping up and making the biggest free throw of the season.

Q. When things kind of shifted there in the second half, you could feel it in the building, a lot of people were looking for maybe a timeout or something. You let them play. What is it about this team that gave you the confidence in that moment to let things unfold?

CHRIS BEARD: First of all, from a coaching standpoint, I think it’s my responsibility to have timeouts late in the game, especially when you’re playing a team like Georgia, who has one of the best defensive presses in college basketball. So that plays into it.

It’s also just kind of a belief of, are we making individual mistakes or are we having a meltdown? I think Ilias contributed a couple of those mistakes, and I trust Ilias 100 percent, 10 out of 10, 100 out of 100. There’s nobody I’d rather have the ball in his hands than Ilias.

So I didn’t think he needed me to call a timeout. I thought for the most part, even though it might not have looked like it, we had the ball in the right players’ hands. Spacing was an issue. But those are the decisions that we have to make as coaches, and they’re really hard to live with when you don’t make the right one.

But tonight my focus was that I needed timeouts in the last four minutes of the game because I understand what Georgia can do defensively.