For Ole Miss Basketball, a curious and consequential hiring process takes shape
Chris Beard? Will Wade? Keith Carter and Ole Miss' appetite for risk will define the future of Rebel Hoops
If we’re being honest, the last 11.5 months of Ole Miss Basketball could aptly be described as delaying the inevitable.
When Ole Miss elected to retain Kermit Davis for another season after a 13-19 (4-14) campaign last year, most realistic people foresaw what the ultimate outcome would be and understood it for what it was: kicking the can down the road in a year that saw six of the 14 head coaching jobs in the SEC become vacant in what was an already crowded coaching carousel nationally (and also a somewhat hectic time within the Ole Miss athletic department).
The inevitable finally arrived last Friday when the program announced that Davis would not be retained and that a coaching search had commenced. This is not to suggest that keeping Davis for a season that was seemingly destined for failure was the wrong move. There was a pollyanna outlook to sell: Daeshun Ruffin and Matthew Murrell returned to comprise a decent foundation, and the transfer portal always provides opportunity to reshape the peripheral elements of a program’s roster. And, as of this writing, Ole Miss is the only vacancy in the SEC. It will likely remain that way, or close to it. One or two more could come open. There is always the possibility of unforeseen attrition, but I doubt six more open like last year, or even half of that. And when you’re a bottom tier job in the league, less competition is good news.
We’ve already covered in a previous newsletter why the Kermit Davis era failed. Friday’s announcement marked a predictable end, but simultaneously ushered in a new chapter of unpredictability as arguably the most consequential coaching search in the program’s history is now underway.
Why is this hire so consequential?
The answer to this is layered. Let’s start with the unprecedentedly-rich candidate pool. From a strictly basketball standpoint, Ole Miss has a realistic opportunity to hire a higher-caliber of coach than it otherwise could in a typical hiring cycle. The reason for this is largely due a pair of proven coaches who are currently nursing freshly-minted blemishes on their respective resumes. I am, of course, referring to former LSU head coach Will Wade and former Texas head coach Chris Beard. Both men are proven winners at the power-five level who are looking for jobs while reconciling the misdeeds that put them out of work in the first place. And to be clear, their respective baggage is not remotely similar in nature. Let’s examine both.
Chris Beard has won everywhere he’s coached
Beard went 30-5 in his lone season as the head coach at Arkansas-Little Rock and reached the Round of 32 of the 2016 NCAA Tournament, notching one of two NCAA Tournament game wins in the program’s history, before bolting to Texas Tech. In his second year in Lubbock, the Red Raiders reached the Elite Eight for the first time in program history. The next year, Beard led them to the 2019 national title game. After a global pandemic canceled the 2020 season, Texas Tech reached the Round of 32 in 2021 before Beard left to take the reigns of his alma mater, Texas. The Longhorns reached the Round of 32 in Beard’s first season while he built a monster recruiting 2022 class.
On December 10, 2022, the 2nd-ranked Longhorns throttled Arkansas Pine-Bluff 88-43, en route to a 7-1 start to the season.
At 2:07 a.m. on December 12, 2022, police were dispatched to Beard’s West Austin home. He was arrested and charged with third-degree felony assault on a family member (domestic violence), stemming from a dispute with his fianceé, Randi Trew, in which she told responding officers that Beard “strangled, bit and hit,” her during a confrontation inside the residence. Texas fired Beard on January 5, for cause, three weeks after suspending him without pay while the school conducted an investigation into the incident. Beard had five years remaining on a seven-year contract that paid him roughly $5 million annually.
On December 23, 2022, eleven days after Beard’s arrest, Trew released a statement in which she recanted some of what she told officers that night, claimed that she initiated the confrontation and supported Beard’s claim that he acted in self-defense.
"Chris and I are deeply saddened that we have brought negative attention upon our family, friends, and the University of Texas, among others," Trew said in the statement. "As Chris' fiancée and biggest supporter, I apologize for the role I played in this unfortunate event. I realize that my frustration, when breaking his glasses, initiated a physical struggle between Chris and myself. Chris did not strangle me, and I told that to law enforcement that evening. Chris has stated that he was acting in self-defense, and I do not refute that. I do not believe Chris was trying to intentionally harm me in any way. It was never my intent to have him arrested or prosecuted. We appreciate everyone's support and prayers during this difficult time."
On February 16, all charges against Beard were dismissed by the Travis County District Attorney’s office. From a legal standpoint (I cannot emphasize that qualifier enough), Beard’s troubles were behind him, and he re-entered the proverbial arena that is college basketball’s coaching carousel.


Ole Miss fired Davis eight days later, and, naturally, Beard’s name became associated with the Rebels’ vacant position. From the most simplistic possible view of this situation, Ole Miss — a job that is viewed as one of the toughest in the power five conferences due to a lack of tradition and resources — has a realistic chance to hire a coach that quickly ascended to the pinnacle of his profession, one that, without baggage, the Rebels would have absolutely no prayer of hiring. I cannot stress that enough. Had this incident not occurred, I am not sure Beard (and his representation) would’ve even answered a phone call to laugh at the notion of a job offer. Coaches of Beard’s caliber (again, from a purely basketball lens) are not remotely in Ole Miss’ league. It would be like Keith Carter calling Kirby Smart in 2019 to inquire about his interest in becoming the Rebels’ next head football coach — a silly idea.
But now, Beard is a man with a rightfully-damaged reputation looking for a fresh start. So, what’s complicated about this? All charges were dropped. Ole Miss should offer Beard, hire him and capitalize on the unusual circumstance, right? I assume most of you readers are rational people and understand why it’s not nearly that simple. Hiring Beard will be a tough sell and a complicated process. It will require an extensive effort to understand what actually happened that night, the chances of it ever happening again, and weighing the risk of the public relations battle that’s sure to occur and what message the hire sends to the fanbase.
College sports are a zero-sum game. Winning is all that matters. Morality often takes a back seat. Many fans choose to be willfully ignorant of this, but it’s simply a fact. The current situation at Alabama is evidence of that.

The Ole Miss Basketball program is currently at rock bottom. It is 7-28 in its last 35 conference games and has won one SEC game on its home court since January of 2022. Desperation often increases the capacity for risk taking. Hiring Beard would be a gigantic risk. Despite the charges being dropped, documentation from the incident is still worth noting. A police affidavit from that night listed several visible signs of an altercation, including bite marks on Trew’s arm and abrasions on her face and leg. Again, Keith Carter and the people who aid him in making this decision, will be tasked with finding out what really happened that night, the chances of it happening again, and weighing that risk that comes with it.
As far as the message that hiring Beard sends, Ole Miss will essentially say the quiet part out loud: winning is the only thing that matters. Depending on the lens in which fans view this from — how you, the fan, prioritize winning juxtaposed with an issue of morality pertaining to the man tasked with winning — will surely offer a varying perspective of acceptance when it comes to this potential hire. My friend and colleague Neal McCready had a terrific segment in his 10 Weekend Thoughts column in which he solicited anonymous feedback from female Ole Miss fans regarding Beard. It is well worth your time.
When it comes to basketball, Beard is a proven winner, at an elite level, one that, in a normal scenario, is in a different stratosphere than the typical candidate for this job. How do you weigh the drastically increased chances of building a winning program that come with hiring Beard— at a perennial bottom feeder desperate for an injection of life — against the baggage he brings with him? That’s a question that Carter will ultimately have to answer.
And then there is Wiretap Will Wade
In what can only be described as a perfect encapsulation of just how precarious of an opportunity Ole Miss has during this hiring process, Will Wade, the former subject of an FBI investigation into the slimy underbelly of college basketball’s recruiting ecosystem, is somehow an easier sell than Beard — with one gigantic caveat.
After a pair of two-year stops as the head coach of Chattanooga and Virginia Commonwealth, Wade landed the LSU job in 2017. By year two in Baton Rouge, Wade’s elite recruiting prowess helped fuel a rapid rebuild. The Tigers went 25-5 with a 15-2 mark in SEC play during the 2018-19 season and captured an SEC regular season championship title. However, Wade was suspended for the final five games of that season after a report emerged on March 7 that he was caught on an FBI wiretap discussing an offer of impermissible benefits to a recruit.
If you’re new here, and are wondering why the hell a federal law enforcement agency was conducting an investigation into college basketball, I would tell you that it’s, well.. complicated, and that I don’t have the time or space here to fully explain it. The simple version is that it began with the Feds investigating a slime ball financial planner named Marty Blazer, who was alleged to have stolen money from a handful of pro athletes to start a Ponzi scheme. In an effort to reduce his sentence, Blazer became an informant and, in turn, essentially provided a 101 education course to the underbelly of college basketball recruiting in which agents paid basketball coaches (most always assistant coaches) to steer players toward them once they left college. The FBI considered these payments as bribes, and since these coaches technically work for public institutions, the FBI treated them as government officials accepting bribes, and that — here is the CRAZY part — the universities these coaches worked for were victims of fraud. The Feds then began investigating executives at Adidas for potentially being guilty of money laundering by offering illicit payment to athletes to attend Adidas-sponsored schools. Welcome to college hoops recruiting!
Anyway, without getting too off topic, the FBI’s Southern District of New York office announced the arrest of 10 individuals in September of 2017, including a handful of assistant coaches. As the investigation progressed, Wade ended up being one of about a dozen coaches wrapped up in all of it. If you think he got a raw deal, the man on the other end of the wiretapped phone call, aspiring agent Christian Dawkins, is currently in prison.
LSU ultimately lifted Wade’s suspension a month after the 2019 season ended, and he actually coached for two more years, before he was fired in March of 2022 shortly after the NCAA issued LSU with a notice of allegations (remember what that is, Ole Miss fans??) for alleged wrongdoing within the basketball program. Essentially, the FBI, armed with, ya know, actual subpoena power, wiretap capabilities and federal law enforcement jurisdiction, did the NCAA’s grunt work for them. Never known for their punctuality, Wade’s case with NCAA is, not shockingly, still pending. His hearing with the IARP (the same thing as the committee on infractions that held a hearing for Ole Miss in Covington, Kentucky a half decade ago, just with a different name) occurred last week. It’s rumored that Wade’s fate won’t be publicly known until June. But to fill you in on how this corrupt circus actually works, administrators, decision makers, and perhaps Wade himself, can, in all likelihood, get an idea of what the punishment will be, well before June. Keith Carter is one of those people.
This puts Carter in a rather precarious spot when it comes to Wade’s potential candidacy for the Ole Miss job. From a morality standpoint, Wade’s baggage is nowhere close to as difficult to reconcile as Beard’s. Not to mention, what Wade is accused of doing is now essentially legal ever since the NIL floodgates opened nearly two years go and brought college athletics into an era that is truly a lawless Wild West. But the caveat here is the potential punishment that looms for Wade. How certain can Carter be that Wade will not receive a show cause? To explain in its most basic sense, a show cause penalty essentially means he is ineligible to coach for X years. There are versions of a show cause in which the accused can continue continue coach, with restrictions, but the most common use of a show cause penalty is to ban a coach from college athletics for a specified amount of time.
There is belief within the industry that Wade may essentially get credit for time served, as he’s been out of coaching for a year now. Some people close to LSU believe the Tigers’ basketball program will receive significant sanctions, which would likely mean significant punishment for Wade as well. And even if the former ends up being true and the latter does not — meaning Wade skates — would the powers that be in the SEC office allow a coach who wrecked an SEC program to go coach at another one, less than two years later? I will refer you to the early stages of the Hugh Freeze redemption tour, when Alabama and at least one other SEC program wanted to hire Freeze as an assistant, but were told they couldn’t, as evidence to why this hypothetical matters. Even if the SEC discouraged the hiring, could Carter point toward the disaster that is currently unfolding with Alabama Basketball and essentially say ‘yeah, save the preaching’ and hire him anyway? I don’t know the answer to any of this. But I am fascinated by the uncertainty.
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There are other candidates without baggage
If you’re exhausted after reading about two of Ole Miss’ potential top candidates, a pair of men they likely couldn’t otherwise hire, without the baggage they lug with them, I don’t blame you. Domestic violence and FBI wiretaps isn’t exactly light reading. But it is also worth pointing out the obvious reality that there are a plethora of other candidates Ole Miss can and should consider.
Florida Atlantic head coach Dusty May is surely one of them. In his fifth season as FAU’s head man, May has led the Owls to a 26-3 (16-2) mark. They are primed for an NCAA Tournament berth. Ironically enough, Ole Miss actually beat FAU by double digits earlier this season. May has loose ties to Ole Miss and Carter. He was a longtime assistant for current Georgia head coach Mike White. Carter and White played basketball together at Ole Miss and remain close friends. White was an assistant at Ole Miss from 2004-2011. Naturally, one would think that May would be highly recommended by one of Carter’s closest friends.
The argument against May is that he is a young, relatively unproven coach with limited power-five experience. It’s one thing to win in Conference USA. The SEC is a different beast. Building a staff of assistants who are elite recruiters and can land top-tier talent at a lower-tier SEC job is a pretty important component of this hire. Not to mention, Ole Miss just hired a former successful C-USA coach. How did that work out? That’s not really fair to May, but it’s worth considering. Can this program afford to recycle another mid-major head coach, who doesn’t compile a strong staff and repeat this cycle again? For a program at rock bottom, wedged between two other sports that are currently winning, with a pristine arena it cannot fill, I would argue that another Kermit Davis era could be disastrous in terms of sparking interest in what is seemingly the red-headed stepchild of the major three programs on campus.
There are other, more proven options here, too. Ohio State’s Chris Holtmann has been linked to the Ole Miss job. He’s made seven consecutive NCAA Tournaments between three years at Butler and six at Ohio State (the 2020 NCAA Tournament was canceled due to Covid). The Buckeyes are currently having a terrible season, and while it’s unlikely Holtmann is fired, could he want a fresh start at a place where expectations aren’t as high? His brother also lives in the Jackson area. It’s worth the phone call. Holtmann recently reaffirmed his loyalty to Ohio State, but as most of you likely know, words are meaningless in this wild world.

Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes wanted the Ole Miss job in 2019. Forbes was at East Tennessee State at the time, and was reportedly in consideration for the job. Forbes took ETSU to one NCAA Tournament, and was primed for another in 2020 before Covid struck (the team was 30-4 and Forbes took the Wake gig shortly after), but after failing to make the Big Dance in his first two years at Wake, and with the Deacs on the wrong side of the bubble again this year, could he possibly seek a reset in Oxford? It would make sense.
Chris Mack is another name that has been floated in relation to the Ole Miss job. Mack, a Cincinnati native, spent nine years as the head coach of Xavier. He made the NCAA Tournament eight times, including four Sweet 16 appearances and one Elite Eight. Mack took the Louisville job in 2018. He made the NCAA Tournament in his first year, Covid killed his second season, missed the tournament in his third year and then was abruptly fired 14 games into last season due to a bizarre extortion incident created by one of his former assistant coaches. Aside from four years as an assistant at Wake from 2001-2004, Mack’s entire 37-year career as a coach has resided either in Cincinnati, or an hour East in Louisville, but he’s a proven winner who clearly knows how to win games in March. What is his interest in this job? How eager is Mack to jump back into coaching? I have no clue.
Pat Kelsey, College of Charleston head coach, is another hot name in the mid-major ranks worth remembering. He led Winthrop to the NCAA Tournament twice before taking the C of C job, and in his second year, has the Cougars at 28-3 and primed for an NCAA Tournament berth. I would put him in a similar camp with May — successful mid-major coach with limited power-five experience. With other options seemingly available, should Ole Miss go down that road again? Again, I would argue no, particularly if a more proven candidate will take the job, but we shall see.
What is Ole Miss’ appetite for risk?
As we close this long-winded column, the question above is the one that will shape this search. Carter and this program are in a fascinating and rather unprecedented spot. Despite the program’s lack of historical success, its reputation for a lack of resources and support, You could make the argument that there is no better time to hire an Ole Miss basketball coach than right now. The job market is uncrowded. The pool of available candidates is unusually strong, and both the school and the fan base have met the proverbial moment as it pertains to NIL organization and funding. Everyone is rowing in the same direction and the fan base has, quite literally, put its money where its mouth is, in terms of offering a competitive NIL war chest (even if donations are football-driven).
I’ll hammer the point home again: the Ole Miss Basketball program is at rock bottom. It’s the laughing stock of the SEC. The Rebels have won one home conference game in 13 months. They are 7-28 in their last 35 SEC games. It cannot get any worse. Desperation often increases the threshold for assuming risk. How risky is Ole Miss willing to get with this hire? Writing this has made me reflect back on 2019, when Carter hired Lane Kiffin. I talked with Carter in his office for roughly 90 minutes one day about his thought process when it came to that hire. He felt a lifeless football program needed a spark and the hire needed to make a splash. I wrote that in a column the day Kiffin was introduced. The word splash was in the headline. Ole Miss Basketball could definitely use a splash, but at what cost?


The two most desirable candidates are Beard and Wade. Neither would consider this job under normal circumstances, but the drastically different baggage they bear has made them candidates. Which one, if either, is Carter willing to hitch his wagon to?
With Beard, you would deservedly take a media beating. A sound public relations plan would need to be drafted and executed. Some fans would justifiably be turned off by his transgressions. With Wade, you’d need to find definitive answers as it pertains to his NCAA case. Whether or not that is possible remains unknown. According to multiple people close to Wade, he wants the job badly. Beard seems somewhat interested, too, from talking to people within the coaching industry.
If Carter deems either as a risk worth assuming, both would make a splash and immediately reinvigorate interest in the program. Right, wrong or indifferent, this is a business solely defined by winning. Season ticket sales would increase immediately upon the hiring of either man. The eye sore that is the thousands of empty seats in a beautiful but usually lifeless arena would be filled. Is the risk worth the reward?
Holtmann and Mack would be perfectly justifiable hires. Neither would generate the immediate excitement of Beard or Wade, but both would be a higher-caliber coach than Ole Miss has ever hired. The two have compiled a combined 16 NCAA tournament appearances in their careers, albeit at better programs than the one they’d be taking over in Oxford. Each would generate optimism and moderate initial buy-in from the fan base, but some level of immediate success would certainly help the cause.
Kelsey and May would be tougher a sell to an already apathetic fan base. It’s a movie the fanbase has seen before, yet they are supposed to be sold on the idea that the ending will somehow be different this time. Immediate success would be a must. The risk factor is low, but the odds of sustainable success are much longer.
There is also, of course, the possibility of Carter hiring someone that isn’t mentioned in this column. These are all just ideas.
But the ultimate question remains the same: as Ole Miss fortuitously finds itself in an uncrowded hiring cycle, with an unusually strong candidate pool, what is the program’s appetite for risk, and where does that lead them as the Rebels navigate the most important hire in the program’s history?
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Here's my take on Beard vs Wade. If either would repeat his transgression, would Ole Miss be in danger of NCAA sanctions? With Wade, absolutely! With Beard, nope. I'd go with the lesser risk, especially since Wade has demonstrated an easy willingness to flaunt the rules.