November 02, 2026 | Men's Basketball
STARKVILLE - Mississippi State head coach Chris Jans met with the media following Monday's win, 106-88, in the season opener against Tennessee Tech.
Q: How are your thoughts on the teams opening day performance?
CJ: "As you can imagine, lots of good spurts and tough ones. We had some guys that played pretty well, some guys that probably didn't play as well as I anticipated or hoped. But I'll be honest, I didn't know. When we agreed to this game, there was a coaching change, and so it's not the style of play that I would have drawn up for us to play against in the first game of the year. I love the fact that we got to play against it now because it's over, and we won. But, it wouldn't have been an out the gates type of game, if I'm being honest, just because of the obvious."
"They're going to trap, they're going to press the majority of the game, they're going to shoot a ton of threes. They're going to play a lot of small ball. We had to kind of adjust on the fly. We played some lineups out there, other than the last couple days, we hadn't messed around with or tinkered with all year long. It just wasn't a really good game for our true fives. We had to just kind of get through it that way, but I was happy to get the win."
Q: Talk about your defense at the end of the first half?
CJ: "I thought it was a combination of what you said. We kind of got our defense in the game a little bit, started guarding the ball better. We started figuring out how we needed to guard them with some more switching. We started switching a lot more than where our base is. And then another thing that probably led to it is we didn't turn the ball over. I don't think we turned the ball over the last 10 or 11 minutes of the second half after starting off with eight to open the game."
"That was probably the number one key that we had going into the game was, trap toughness is what we talked about. We were going to get trapped a lot more than we're used to in practice, and a lot more than any other team that we've played thus far in the preseason did to us. Other than the early part of the game, I thought we handled it pretty well."
Q: How do you evaluate Josh Hubbard's performance
CJ: "I was telling the radio, I was on Josh because I thought he had a couple careless, uncharacteristic turnovers there. I'm jumping in, and I think maybe he gave me a little bit of a look of disdain at some point, and then I look at the box score, and he has 25 and nine assists. Maybe he deserved to look at me a little bit that way, but I just have an unbelievably high standard for him, and I know he does as well, especially with all of the experience he has. I thought a big key was that it didn't get tight, tight, but when the score went from 20-22 to whatever it got, 12 to 13, I thought Josh really stepped up and kind of showed why he is who he is for this basketball team."
Q: Coach, talk about how important taking care of the ball is after the eight-minute timeout?
CJ: "Take care of the ball. Don't throw it to the other team. I'm happy about that, because they put a lot of stress on a trap for the majority of the game or looked like they're going to trap for the majority of the game. If you get near the basket on the drive, and they've got a help defender coming over there, they're going to trap. They just really want to put two on the ball as much as they can. We played some lineups that we hadn't even thought about playing, and that's going to end up being really good for us. It's going to be great. It's not so great for some of the five men that were projected to play a lot more minutes than they did. Tristan [Reed], we were thinking he could probably play a little bit more, because the way he moves defensively, but then he got in trouble, and then in the end we just stuck with the small ball lineup to try to finish it up."
Q: In preparation for tonight's game did you look at tape from Tobin Anderson's previous NCAA tournament games at FDU?
CJ: "I'm pretty thorough, but I did not do that. I didn't want to get more nervous or stressed out about it, but we did go back and watch his Iona teams in South Florida consistently, with Coach Hodgson to try to figure out what style he was going to play. We certainly did our due diligence behind the scenes, and fortunately our staff did a tremendous job of getting some information and making sure that we [were] prepared. That's always scary when you're walking into a first game opponent with a new coach, and a guy that hadn't been a head coach for a few years, but he'd been a head coach and [has] been successful and then picked up some things from another system. You could see parts of what he's done in the past, and certainly what he's learned at South Florida as well."
Q: Touch on how you felt about King Grace tonight?
CJ: "I like the fact that the ball went in the hole. I like the fact that he shot with confidence. He got an early call off the bench. I can't remember exactly why. We gave him an early call. Thomas [Bassong] maybe got a foul or something happened, I'm not sure, but we put him in earlier than I probably, in my brain, was expecting to, and he responded.When the game was tighter, he probably deserved to be in the game down the stretch, because of how he played, but I really wanted to get [Jalyn] Collingwood some game minutes. He hadn't played in any of the three opportunities in the fall leading up to the opener, and I felt like it was a really good situation for him to get some minutes and get some tape and see what he looked like out there when we finished the game that way."
Q: Talk about what you saw from freshman, Jayln Collingwood?
CJ: "Yeah, he had a great summer and then he got injured, and it was pretty crushing for all of us. I mean, every injury is just the worst, obviously, but for a freshman that came in and showed the promise that he did, he really understands the game. And then to miss basically 30 practices, it's just a lot for anybody, especially for someone that's a fresh player and body into your program and your system. But the positive was I knew he would mentally stay engaged. I knew he would pick things up quickly because of his basketball IQ. I just think he looks comfortable on the floor, and he didn't guard as well as he needed to, or I think he's capable of. He threw some soft, floating passes that he tends to do a little bit, that probably should have got picked off and will get picked off against a bigger, better athlete. But I'm just glad that he was able to get some minutes tonight."
Q: What are your thoughts on how Tajuan Simpkins played tonight?
CJ: "That's what he needs to do. He likes to score. Everybody likes to score, but he needs to do more than that for us. He's got to buy into being a complete player. He's obviously got some capabilities of doing that. He needs to rebound the ball. He needs to guard better. I don't think he guarded the ball very well tonight. They kind of picked on him a little bit there down the stretch, and granted, they made some tough ones. There were some tough runners that kind of bounced around and went in, but I love the fact that he did other things. He got other things in the stat sheet besides scoring the basketball."
Q: How do you prepare for Thursday's matchup against Northwestern State.
CJ: "I fashion myself as if I didn't coach basketball, I would've liked to have coached football, but I had never heard that before. I don't think it's the same for basketball. Maybe just because of the obvious short turnaround, you play a lot more games than they do. I don't think you really know your team until you've got 10, 15 games under your belt and play against different styles and have enough minutes, enough data. I don't know if I like the quick turnaround or not, but it is what it is. I haven't started on them, so obviously that's going to be the assignment tonight to get home, open up the computer, and try to see what we got next."
Q: What have you seen from King Grace's development?
CJ: "None of us have any expectations, and King doesn't either, that he's going to average 23 points a game, but he's shown like some other guys have, we have some guys that are capable of being a lead scorer, a specific night, and he did that tonight. He could shoot the ball. I thought his confidence got better as he shot the ball, and the thing to answer your question directly is he is slowed down more than when he got the ball when he first got here, which happens a lot."
"Leading scorer for his high school. Leading scorer for his AAU team. They make leading scorer plays and sometimes it gets them in trouble on the offensive end. He's always been one of our tougher kids. He's a hard worker. He doesn't back down from anything or anybody. Now, having said that, he's still got to, even in his second year, learn the defense, learn the rotations, and this should be secondhand to him at this point. But I'm happy for him that he had the game that he had. Hopefully it'll boost his confidence going forward."
Q: How are your thoughts on the teams opening day performance?
CJ: "As you can imagine, lots of good spurts and tough ones. We had some guys that played pretty well, some guys that probably didn't play as well as I anticipated or hoped. But I'll be honest, I didn't know. When we agreed to this game, there was a coaching change, and so it's not the style of play that I would have drawn up for us to play against in the first game of the year. I love the fact that we got to play against it now because it's over, and we won. But, it wouldn't have been an out the gates type of game, if I'm being honest, just because of the obvious."
"They're going to trap, they're going to press the majority of the game, they're going to shoot a ton of threes. They're going to play a lot of small ball. We had to kind of adjust on the fly. We played some lineups out there, other than the last couple days, we hadn't messed around with or tinkered with all year long. It just wasn't a really good game for our true fives. We had to just kind of get through it that way, but I was happy to get the win."
Q: Talk about your defense at the end of the first half?
CJ: "I thought it was a combination of what you said. We kind of got our defense in the game a little bit, started guarding the ball better. We started figuring out how we needed to guard them with some more switching. We started switching a lot more than where our base is. And then another thing that probably led to it is we didn't turn the ball over. I don't think we turned the ball over the last 10 or 11 minutes of the second half after starting off with eight to open the game."
"That was probably the number one key that we had going into the game was, trap toughness is what we talked about. We were going to get trapped a lot more than we're used to in practice, and a lot more than any other team that we've played thus far in the preseason did to us. Other than the early part of the game, I thought we handled it pretty well."
Q: How do you evaluate Josh Hubbard's performance
CJ: "I was telling the radio, I was on Josh because I thought he had a couple careless, uncharacteristic turnovers there. I'm jumping in, and I think maybe he gave me a little bit of a look of disdain at some point, and then I look at the box score, and he has 25 and nine assists. Maybe he deserved to look at me a little bit that way, but I just have an unbelievably high standard for him, and I know he does as well, especially with all of the experience he has. I thought a big key was that it didn't get tight, tight, but when the score went from 20-22 to whatever it got, 12 to 13, I thought Josh really stepped up and kind of showed why he is who he is for this basketball team."
Q: Coach, talk about how important taking care of the ball is after the eight-minute timeout?
CJ: "Take care of the ball. Don't throw it to the other team. I'm happy about that, because they put a lot of stress on a trap for the majority of the game or looked like they're going to trap for the majority of the game. If you get near the basket on the drive, and they've got a help defender coming over there, they're going to trap. They just really want to put two on the ball as much as they can. We played some lineups that we hadn't even thought about playing, and that's going to end up being really good for us. It's going to be great. It's not so great for some of the five men that were projected to play a lot more minutes than they did. Tristan [Reed], we were thinking he could probably play a little bit more, because the way he moves defensively, but then he got in trouble, and then in the end we just stuck with the small ball lineup to try to finish it up."
Q: In preparation for tonight's game did you look at tape from Tobin Anderson's previous NCAA tournament games at FDU?
CJ: "I'm pretty thorough, but I did not do that. I didn't want to get more nervous or stressed out about it, but we did go back and watch his Iona teams in South Florida consistently, with Coach Hodgson to try to figure out what style he was going to play. We certainly did our due diligence behind the scenes, and fortunately our staff did a tremendous job of getting some information and making sure that we [were] prepared. That's always scary when you're walking into a first game opponent with a new coach, and a guy that hadn't been a head coach for a few years, but he'd been a head coach and [has] been successful and then picked up some things from another system. You could see parts of what he's done in the past, and certainly what he's learned at South Florida as well."
Q: Touch on how you felt about King Grace tonight?
CJ: "I like the fact that the ball went in the hole. I like the fact that he shot with confidence. He got an early call off the bench. I can't remember exactly why. We gave him an early call. Thomas [Bassong] maybe got a foul or something happened, I'm not sure, but we put him in earlier than I probably, in my brain, was expecting to, and he responded.When the game was tighter, he probably deserved to be in the game down the stretch, because of how he played, but I really wanted to get [Jalyn] Collingwood some game minutes. He hadn't played in any of the three opportunities in the fall leading up to the opener, and I felt like it was a really good situation for him to get some minutes and get some tape and see what he looked like out there when we finished the game that way."
Q: Talk about what you saw from freshman, Jayln Collingwood?
CJ: "Yeah, he had a great summer and then he got injured, and it was pretty crushing for all of us. I mean, every injury is just the worst, obviously, but for a freshman that came in and showed the promise that he did, he really understands the game. And then to miss basically 30 practices, it's just a lot for anybody, especially for someone that's a fresh player and body into your program and your system. But the positive was I knew he would mentally stay engaged. I knew he would pick things up quickly because of his basketball IQ. I just think he looks comfortable on the floor, and he didn't guard as well as he needed to, or I think he's capable of. He threw some soft, floating passes that he tends to do a little bit, that probably should have got picked off and will get picked off against a bigger, better athlete. But I'm just glad that he was able to get some minutes tonight."
Q: What are your thoughts on how Tajuan Simpkins played tonight?
CJ: "That's what he needs to do. He likes to score. Everybody likes to score, but he needs to do more than that for us. He's got to buy into being a complete player. He's obviously got some capabilities of doing that. He needs to rebound the ball. He needs to guard better. I don't think he guarded the ball very well tonight. They kind of picked on him a little bit there down the stretch, and granted, they made some tough ones. There were some tough runners that kind of bounced around and went in, but I love the fact that he did other things. He got other things in the stat sheet besides scoring the basketball."
Q: How do you prepare for Thursday's matchup against Northwestern State.
CJ: "I fashion myself as if I didn't coach basketball, I would've liked to have coached football, but I had never heard that before. I don't think it's the same for basketball. Maybe just because of the obvious short turnaround, you play a lot more games than they do. I don't think you really know your team until you've got 10, 15 games under your belt and play against different styles and have enough minutes, enough data. I don't know if I like the quick turnaround or not, but it is what it is. I haven't started on them, so obviously that's going to be the assignment tonight to get home, open up the computer, and try to see what we got next."
Q: What have you seen from King Grace's development?
CJ: "None of us have any expectations, and King doesn't either, that he's going to average 23 points a game, but he's shown like some other guys have, we have some guys that are capable of being a lead scorer, a specific night, and he did that tonight. He could shoot the ball. I thought his confidence got better as he shot the ball, and the thing to answer your question directly is he is slowed down more than when he got the ball when he first got here, which happens a lot."
"Leading scorer for his high school. Leading scorer for his AAU team. They make leading scorer plays and sometimes it gets them in trouble on the offensive end. He's always been one of our tougher kids. He's a hard worker. He doesn't back down from anything or anybody. Now, having said that, he's still got to, even in his second year, learn the defense, learn the rotations, and this should be secondhand to him at this point. But I'm happy for him that he had the game that he had. Hopefully it'll boost his confidence going forward."
Players Mentioned
Monday, November 02
Monday, November 02
Thursday, October 29
Friday, October 23