The Ole Miss head coach was none too pleased
PublishedNovember 19, 2025 11:20 AM EST•UpdatedNovember 19, 2025 10:54 AM EST
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Ole Miss took care of Austin Peay 72-65 on Tuesday night to move to 5-0 on the season, and while some coaches would accept the win and simply move on to the next game, Chris Beard is not that type of head coach.
The Rebels entered the contest against the Governors as 20-point favorites, and while it’s fair to assume Beard wasn’t concerned with the point spread, he was very much aware that his club should have dominated a mid-major opponent on its home floor.
Instead, the Rebels came out of the gates slowly and could not produce that true knockout punch that great teams are able to find.
While Ole Miss’ starters accounted for 52 of the team’s 72 points on Tuesday night, Beard was none too pleased with their efforts, so he elected to pull one of his coaching tricks out of his sleeves and bring all five of them to his postgame press conference to field questions from the media.
To set the tone, Beard sat down between his players, and the first words out of his mouth were reportedly, “These are our starters who beat Austin Peay by seven tonight, any questions for these guys?”
You don’t see many coaches pull this type of tactic after a Tuesday night home game against a mid-major, in a game his team won, but Beards operates a bit differently. He did the same thing in the press room last season after a loss to Mississippi State.
During Tuesday night’s presser, Beard specifically called out Malik Dia, a leader for the Rebels, before sending a clear message to the rest of his club with SEC play fast approaching.
“By my naked eye, I didn’t see one guy out there that blocked out well enough tonight for us to be successful in an SEC game,” Beard explained. “A lot of individual mistakes. You know, the deal is, ‘well, coach, that’s my bad’ and the next guy says ‘that’s my bad,’ I understand whose bad it is. These mistakes add up.”
Ole Miss was out-rebounded 43-42 by the Governors, so Beard certainly has a point in his assessment.
Tuesday night’s close game was a textbook look-ahead spot for the Rebels with their first road trip of the season coming up next on the schedule with a trip to Palm Springs to take on an unbeaten Iowa team.
