Bulldogs resume MACJC South play Thursday

PERKINSTON — One of the biggest hurdles MACJC basketball coaches have to overcome with their teams is the holiday break, a time smackdab when division play is getting underway where everybody goes home for a couple weeks.

Mississippi Gulf Coast men's basketball coach Jason Harrison has had his players back since the start of the year, and they're getting ready to jump back into South Division play Thursday against Copiah-Lincoln.

"We've looked OK," he said. "We didn't come back from break as badly out of shape as I thought we would. Guys tried to come back in decent shape. There were probably three guys who took too much time off or didn't get enough work in."

The Bulldogs already got their first win of 2020 over the weekend, a 123-57 blowout against Royal Ambassadors. Co-Lin (5-5, 0-1 South) will be a sterner test.

Tipoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the Weathers-Wentzell Center. The game will be streamed at https://livestream.com/MGCCCBulldogs/events/8951028.

Gulf Coast is unbeaten in nine games, including a division win over East Central before the break. There aren't likely to be surprises against the Wolves.

"They're a well-coached team," Harrison said. "They're going to try to run their stuff, like they've done for years and years. They've always done the dribble-drive. They'll set you up for back-door, try to get you to foul. We've got to be disciplined. We've got to be solid on defense, block out and rebound."

Harrison said he's still trying to figure out all his team's bells and whistles. He admits to being bull-headed about how he wants to play sometimes, but he realizes playing to their strengths will get the Bulldogs farther.

The biggest key will be consistency.

"I think we're a team that plays in spurts. It seems like I'm missing something, but then I get to replace something. I'm trying to find that secret ingredient to get us going for 40 minutes instead of five minutes here and six minutes there."

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