Chris Beard Details First Offseason With Ole Miss Rebels on College Hoops Today Podcast

The Rebels head coach went into detail about his plans in Oxford this week.

As the old Southern adage goes, Chris Beard "has a lot of irons in the fire" in his first offseason with the Ole Miss Rebels.

Beard joined Jon Rothstein on the College Hoops Today Podcast on Monday, and he went into detail about what he's been up to this spring in Oxford. From staff building, to recruiting, to plans for future trips, the Rebels head coach has been a busy man.

One of Beard's biggest talking points was on the assembling of his staff, something that he has been proud of at all of his career stops.

“We’ve got some talented guys,” Beard said. “I’ve never put staffs together with anything other than the most talented, head-coach-type guys we have. I don’t believe in, ‘This guy is a recruiter, this guy is an on-the-floor coach.’ We try to get guys that have not only been head coaches in Division I but undeniably will be soon."

Another positive for Beard is that a large portion of his staff either has SEC experience or has spent time on basketball's biggest stage.

“What’s extra special here is a lot of guys on this staff we’ve all worked together before. Al Pinkins, coming over from Texas Tech, has experience at several SEC schools. Al’s one of the best guys I’ve ever worked with. Brian Burg, who was a part our Final Four team at Texas Tech, most recently the head coach at Georgia Southern. Wes Flanigan coming from Auburn and having that SEC experience. He did a great job with [Bruce Pearl] over there. They were in the Final Four in the same year we were.

“Certainly for us, nobody’s more important than John Reilly, our strength coach. In my opinion, one of the best in all of basketball. John does so much, not just as a strength coach. He builds and defends our culture every day. To have coach Reilly here, too, is another example of where the optimism comes from here.”

Beard was also vocal about some potential trips for Ole Miss in the future, perhaps even to Madison Square Garden. He has been known to take some of his previous programs to that spot as well.

An unorthodox idea of his that could go over well with Rebel fans is a "throwback" game inside Tad Smith Coliseum that still stands on campus. The "Tad Pad" was replaced by the SJB Pavilion as the program's basketball home in 2016.

On top of these "big picture plans," Beard is also hard at work putting together a roster that can win sooner rather than later in Oxford. He has already snagged Georgetown transfer Brandon Murray and Arizona State's Austin Nunez. North Texas' Tylor Perry and Western Kentucky's Jamarion Sharp also visited in recent days.

“The talent’s undeniable,” Beard said. “I know with some of the key guys coming back, in my eyes they’re All-SEC-type players. Not only really good players, but good people. There’s a lot of good character around this program."

Beard was vocal when he took the Ole Miss job about wanting to keep as much of the current Rebels roster intact as possible, but he may not have envisioned that they would also be helpful in adding new talent to the fold this offseason. In his words, they have done just that.

“Our current players have done a great job this spring helping us recruit the new players," Beard said. "I think we’re off to a good start. I have a lot of confidence in everybody in our organization. Our coaching staff, once it’s completed, it’ll be elite. It’ll be one of the best in college basketball. That’ll be undeniable. We’ve got a lot of people that want to be here, and we all share the vision and the dream of what this thing could be.”

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