What to know from Chris Jans' press conference: Aggies drawing on experience down final stretch

LAS CRUCES — The road trip was difficult.

Between playing two road games in three days against two of the top five teams in the Western Athletic Conference, one of which was in front of the largest student body the Aggies have played in front of this season, and traveling more than 3,000 miles, the road trip was less than ideal, even though New Mexico State's double-digit margins of victory suggest otherwise.

"It's a tough turnaround when it's not on the schedule originally," head coach Chris Jans said of the road trip, which was originally scheduled to be a one-game trip to Grand Canyon before NMSU's game against Seattle was rescheduled to Monday. "But the guys handled it as well as we could expect. Certainly we knew it was a big swing. We knew what was at stake. We knew these results would eventually matter for all of the teams we were playing. Certainly we won both, so we feel pretty good about it, but there's a lot of basketball yet to be played."

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NMSU is now 23-4 on the season and 13-2 in conference play after its 82-66 win at Grand Canyon Saturday and its 68-55 win over Seattle Monday, giving the Aggies a one-game lead over second-place Seattle and setting the stage for the team to reclaim the WAC regular-season championship. But the Aggies still have three games left on their schedule, beginning Saturday at Chicago State, although Jans says he likes where the team is at as the end of the season draws closer.

"We played well this weekend. We certainly very well on the road against GCU. The ball went through the hole," Jans said. "On Monday, we didn't shoot it as well from (the 3-point line), obviously 7-22, but we still defended at a high level. We rebounded at a high level... but I liked the fact that they continued to defend even though the ball wasn't going through the hole. ...There's stuff to improve on, and we're going to continue to try to get the most out of (the players)."

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Jans, Aggies drawing on experience down final stretch

Experience matters to Jans.

Not just experience in the sense of having a veteraned coaching staff and older players with dozens of starts under their belts, but experience thanks to events that have taken place over the season — like this weekend's two-games-in-three-days road trip. He says the team will draw on experiences from this season as they turn down the home stretch.

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"(We'll) talk about certain times certain times of preparation where we weren't as good and what happened that particular game, and then other times where we felt like we were more locked in with our focus and with our mindset and with our approach and how well we played," Jans said. "We're going to double down on it and continue to talk about, 'Look how we played when you guys played for each other, and you weren't concerned about the stats and who was scoring and who was even playing the most minutes.'

Jans said he expects the team to handle the success of its most recent road swing the same way it has for most of the season, but the team still has to regroup before playing its final three games.

Schedule briefly rearranged following Monday game

NMSU hasn't had a Monday-night game since conference play began. So after playing its first WAC Monday-night game of the season, NMSU's schedule looks a little bit different this week.

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NMSU had several of its players who either played few or no minutes Monday perform light workouts at the team hotel before flying out of Seattle Tuesday, which Jans said the team typically does. Wednesday will be a "film day" to watch tape, and the team will have a practice largely based on individual drills. Some players will have more physical workouts while others have cardio-based workouts, Jans said. Some players will "do nothing but get shots up."

He said he plans to return to a regular practice routine Thursday, two days before the Aggies' next contest. The team returns to the road later this week to take on Chicago State Saturday at 1 p.m.

Starting rotation of forwards not 'set in stone'

Jans' rotation of forwards Will McNair, Yuat Alok and Donnie Tillman at the four position hasn't just been random. It's been determined by a variety of factors, including practice productivity, frame of mind and matchups, Jans said. But it ultimately isn't a huge deal to Jans.

"I understand starting, what that means to certain individuals, but at the end of the day, it's about who's on the floor when it's hard. Who's on the floor if it's a possession-type game down the stretch?" Jans said. "That's more important than anything. That shows you who you trust, who you as a staff trust the most, and it's not always that, either.

"Sometimes someone's just really playing well and you want to ride that momentum and keep him on the floor," he said. "So I wouldn't say it's set in stone at this point. I think all the guys understand that, and they're not too caught up in it. They don't get down if their name's not on the board as a starter."

When to wear suits, and when to wear polos?

I had to ask.

NMSU's coaching staff has worn suits for every home game this season, but it has split between suits and Aggie polo shirts for road games. The staff has worn suits to slightly more than 25% of road games so far and worn polo shirts and slacks to the rest. So how do Jans and the coaches determined when they want to wear suits and when they want to wear polos?

"The rule of thumb this year has been if we're going for a two-game swing, we're not going to pack suits. If we're going just for one game, then we're going to pack suits. So that's been the rule of thumb," Jans said. "But since the GCU game was so close, and we had people that drove, what we did was we packed suits for that game, and then we didn't have to take them to Seattle, because we had friends and family that could take them back for us.

"So that's kind of where we split this particular road trip."

Stephen Wagner is a sports reporter for the Las Cruces Sun-News. He can found on Twitter at @stephenwag22 and reached at SWagner@lcsun-news.com.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Aggies drawing on experience down final stretch of WAC season