Senior guard Sean Pedulla has made an immediate impact on the Ole Miss Men’s Basketball team during his first season with the Rebels. The standout transfer is the leading scorer at 14.9 points per game, proving to be a crucial part of the team’s success this season.
“Pedulla, we believe, is one of the best guards in college basketball. He’s got a proven track record as an all-conference player in the ACC,” Ole Miss Head Coach Chris Beard said in an interview with The Rebel Walk. “His intangibles, his ability to run a team and also score were very viable to us.”
Pedulla, an Edmond, Okla., native, came to Oxford from Virginia Tech, where he began his collegiate basketball career as a three-star prospect. In three seasons with the Hokies, Pedulla appeared in more than 30 games each year.
Pedulla is coming off of a spectacular junior season in which he posted 16.4 points, 4.6 assists and 4.3 rebounds per game. All were career highs, earning Pedulla All-ACC Third Team honors and a four-star transfer rating, according to 247Sports.
Despite individual success, Pedulla is not satisfied and is looking to fine-tune his skills during his senior season.
“I’m just ready to get to the point where I’m one of the best point guards in the country. I want to cut down on turnovers and get higher percentages from beyond the arc,” Pedulla told Inside the Rebels prior to the season.
Pedulla is shooting 40% from three and averaging 1.6 turnovers per game. These numbers are a significant change from last season, when Pedulla shot 32% from three and averaged 3.3 turnovers per game.
Both, if maintained, would be his best averages since his freshman year, when his production was limited to 12.9 minutes a game. This season he is playing more than 33 minutes a game and attempting a career high of six threes per game.
Despite fielding interests from numerous programs, Pedulla chose to compete for Ole Miss because of its environment.
“I’d say that what I was most looking forward to coming out of the portal was just being in a place where they foster culture. It’s the slogan here, but it’s also definitely a priority in everything that they do,” Pedulla said. “Coach Beard and the coaching staff are all connected, and they all want everything to be built around the culture which I think is very cool.”
A competitive culture is not new to Pedulla. Growing up, Pedulla was the third youngest of nine kids. With five brothers and three sisters, sibling competition could get intense.
“I can count how many times I’ve been hit in the head with a basketball, football or baseball. It’s just nuts. On our back patio, we would have this dribbling game, where it’s like knockout, but it’s like no fouls,” Pedulla said. “It was like my dad’s favorite game because kids start crying, he’s like ‘get up, just be tough’ and stuff like that, so it was great. … I would like to think that has kind of made me who I am as a person but also as a player; that helped me out a lot.”
Pedulla’s lone NCAA tournament appearance came against Coach Beard in a Texas-Virginia Tech matchup where freshman Pedulla was the Hokies’ leading scorer, pouring 19 points into a 81-73 Virginia Tech loss.
Pedulla looks poised to lead the Rebels to the NCAA tournament for the first time since the 2018-19 season. But first, the Rebels must complete an SEC schedule with Mississippi State, Auburn, Tennessee and Florida all looming large.
