Ole Miss Basketball: 3 takeaways from the hiring of head coach Chris Beard

What will this team look like next year?

Answering this question is a lot more difficult now than in years past with the advent of the Transfer Portal. Something that both helps and hurts first-year head coaches is how they can seemingly rebuild a roster overnight by raiding the Transfer Portal, and it can be to the benefit or detriment of these coaches. Jerome Tang is having a phenomenal season at Kansas State, thanks in part to the addition of former Florida star Keyontae Johnson. On the contrary, Kenny Payne’s season at Louisville was a disaster because he didn’t add enough guards during the offseason.

One thing we know is that this Rebels roster will look pretty different next season. Two of their top three scorers, junior Jaemyn Brakefield and freshman Amaree Abram, have recently entered the Portal and they aren’t alone, as sophomore guard James White will also be looking for a new school. Additionally, Myles Burn, a starter who averaged 8 points this season, is out of eligibility, and fellow seniors Robert Allen and Jayveous McKinnis will likely not be back either.

Matthew Murrell was the leading scorer and should be back at this point, while the Rebels will hope to get Daeshun Ruffin back too after he suffered several injuries and stepped away from basketball back in late January. Outside of that, Beard has significant holes to fill on this roster and will need to use the Portal to figure out his starting rotation. Those two pieces give them a strong backcourt if they’re both back and healthy and there will certainly be pieces out there to fill this frontcourt.

The bottom line is that we don’t know exactly who will fill out this roster, but we do know that the amount of names in the Portal continues to grow and Beard and his new staff will be all over the market. It’s hard to say what to expect from the Rebels without knowing who’ll be making plays for this team, but you can bet that Beard will want to be competitive from the beginning. He’s not bringing in freshmen or unproven players to build success, he wants a breakthrough in year one. Whether or not that comes to pass in a tough SEC remains to be seen, but there are going to be a lot of new faces in Oxford next year.

Whether Beard be successful at Ole Miss remains to be seen, but we’ve examined a few sides and aftereffects of his hiring. Can the Rebels compete for SEC titles in the near future and can Beard really bounce back after the horrible way his career at Texas came to a close?