Chris Beard said it twice in his own availability Thursday: Ole Miss has to rebound better. A few minutes later, Patton Pinkins was asked what specifically went wrong on the glass against Alabama, and he did not spread it around.
“Just physicality, and that’s on me. Being more physical, staying lower. You know, rebounding is a choice. So just being more physical as a team, I think, is what we got to work on.”
“Rebounding is a choice” is a coach’s sentence. It turns out a coach had recently said something like it to him directly.
“Me and Coach Beard actually met about that”
Asked what he took away from his own performance in Birmingham, Pinkins went back to the same word and then told the room where it came from.
“Like I said before, just physical. I was getting bumped around too much. Me and Coach Beard actually met about that, just being lower, being more of a dog. So that’s something I took away from that.”
That is the tension in two minutes of tape, and both halves are his. The diagnosis is physicality. The prescription came out of a one-on-one with his head coach. And when he was asked whether he wants to be the one leading that physicality against UAB, he took the job.
“Yes, sir, for sure. We’ve had this week to prepare for UAB. So just being more physical out here and being more of a leader, talking to the guys, knowing that we got to execute on the glass more going into the UAB game.”
“I’m not worried about the shooting at all”
Pinkins was asked about the other problem from Birmingham too — a cold shooting night that a reporter pointed out would probably look different over a full season. He waved it off.
“Yeah, I’m not worried about the shooting at all. Guys in here every day shooting 300, 500 shots, so they’ll fall when the season comes.”
So: shots are a volume problem and they will fix themselves. Rebounds are a choice, and he is choosing to own them. Pinkins has been through an SEC season already, and he called Alabama a good test before regular-season play. UAB at the Pavilion on Tuesday is the retest.