OXFORD — For Chris Beard, there wasn’t a lot of time to mourn a Sweet 16 loss or reflect on a remarkable second season at Ole Miss.
The transfer portal waits for no man, regardless of how far his team advances in the NCAA Tournament.
“Even if you're playing on that last night, it ends abruptly,” Beard said Tuesday, just before Ole Miss went through its second team workout of the summer. “And then you get tied into that recruiting pretty quick and everything starts.
So in the days following that narrow, heartbreaking loss to Michigan State in Atlanta, Beard and his staff went about the already ongoing process of building a basically new roster for the 2025-26 season. Malik Dia and Eduardo Klafke returned, but the rest of the Rebels’ main contributors from the team that beat North Carolina and Iowa State in Milwaukee ran out of eligibility on that Friday night in Atlanta.
So Beard went searching, in large part, for guys who had proven they could win at the collegiate level.
“It's definitely one of the ingredients,” Beard said. “I think everybody has a different formula. It's talent. Number one, no matter what somebody tells you, you gotta have talent to play in the league you're in. So for us, we're looking for SEC talent, which translates to professional basketball talent.
“If you play in this league, you know you're a pro at some level. Then you start getting into just what people really like.”
Beard joked about discussing queso preferences, noting that he prefers the yellow/orange Tex-Mex variety while others prefer the white queso that’s often served in the Southeast.
“I think recruiting is no different,” Beard said. “Yeah, we all want everything, but at some point what's important to you and it's really no different than the players. They hear it all — a nice gym, playing time, (NIL), but at some point these players are like, you know what do I really want?”
Beard said the Rebels went searching for competitive players who love basketball, love being a great teammate and possessing a desire to get better. Ole Miss added eight transfers from programs such as Butler, Kansas, Kentucky, LSU, Louisville and High Point. They went overseas for a high-level French guard. The new roster has more than 550 games of college basketball under its collective belt.
“From time to time you, you take that player that maybe hasn't experienced winning,” Beard said. “But that's a challenge. There there's something about winning. When you're six minutes up in the game, it's tied up. Some guys think, ‘We’re gonna win this game.’”
A year ago, Ole Miss was 24-12 overall and 10-8 in a highly competitive SEC. The Rebels went 1-1 in the SEC Tournament in Nashville, beating an Arkansas team that went to the Sweet 16 before losing in the final minute against an Auburn team that advanced to the Final Four. The Rebels were a play or two away from earning another shot at those Tigers in the Elite Eight, and the process of making another deep run in March began in earnest Monday.
“And we will have enough talent this year to compete,” Beard said. "We’ll have enough talent on our team to win any 40-minute game there. There won't be a 40-minute game this year that we just throw up the white towel 'cause the talent will be there.
“We’ll have to piece this thing together and play winning basketball. Probably more important than just talent is, do the pieces fit? Are we dealing with character people? And we all enjoyed that ride last year. I don't know if somebody's gonna write a book about last year's team, or at least a long article, but that team was built on character. That team was built on guys that from the first day to the last day, through the ups and downs, the valleys and peaks, just kept fighting.
“So yeah, we got a little spoiled last year. And so this year we tried to put really good human beings together. Now can we turn this into a culture yet to be seen? And that's what we're working on today.”
