Chris Beard has Ole Miss ‘adapting’ to the ever-changing landscape of recruiting in basketball

When Chris Beard was introduced as the new head coach of Ole Miss’ men’s basketball team next immediate thing he had to focus on once walking off the stage inside the SJB Pavilion was roster retention and recruiting.

The season was a couple weeks over for Ole Miss by the time Beard’s hiring was official and players were already hitting the transfer portal or at the very least strongly considering it. Beard lost a few players, including Amaree Abrams and Daeshun Ruffin, to the portal.

Beard also lost a top prospect for the 2023 signing class in four-start and in-state prospect Josh Hubbard who de-committed after Kermit Davis left the program. Beard was unable to retain Hubbard, who signed with Mississippi State.

Though there was another key piece to the Ole Miss signing class that Beard was able to retain. Despite a little back and forth Rashaud Marshall ended up sticking with the Rebels after de-committing like Hubbard, even re-opening his recruitment for a time, before coming back to the Ole Miss ranks.

The portal and NIL has changed the landscape for college football for years but recent college basketball is starting to see the effects. Nothing new for Beard who has seen a lot of change in his career.

“Well coaching is always about adapting,” Beard told The Ole Miss Spirit. “It’s one of the biggest parts of this profession in this job, because things change in our world daily. When you’re dealing with 18, 22, 23 year olds, just so many things. So, obviously, lately everybody can see that the portal and name, image and likeness coming in at the same time basically and really changed college basketball.

“Before that it was social media and it was TV contracts. It was conference realignment, it was three-point line, it was freshmen being able to play, it was grad transfers. So the game is always going to change.”

Beard has Ole Miss back on track with landing key additions from the portal in his first three months on the job.

Beard’s additions has Ole Miss inside the Top 20 of the transfer portal rankings for 2023.

There were four 4-star players that left Ole Miss but Beard replenished all four of them plus one more. The addition of a three-star player put Ole Miss at No. 13 in On3’s Team Transfer Portal Rankings.

Those five players are Allen Flanigan from Auburn, Moussa Cisse (Oklahoma State), Jamarion Sharp (Western Kentucky), Brandon Murray (Georgetown) and Austin Nunez (Arizona State).

From the high school ranks Beard also managed to sign Jacob Gazzo, a three-star forward from Briarcrest Christian.

Plenty of work has been done by Beard in a short amount of time in a world that requires balancing a lot of spinning plates at the same time. From roster retention to re-recruiting players already on the roster to trying to successfully navigate the portal and NIL.

“It’s up to players and coaches and those of us involved in the game to be able to adapt and that’s what great players do,” Beard said. “They adapt and that’s what the great coaches do. …We don’t set a lot of rules as coaches. It’s just our job to figure out a way to win within the rules. So internally with our organization, we don’t spend a lot of time talking about the what-ifs. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about things we can’t control. But we do spend real time talking about how to put our players in the best position to be successful. So we have to adapt. And that’s what we’re doing currently with the new rules.”

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