This season, half of the Ole Miss Men’s Basketball team are incoming transfers from other college basketball programs. Their journeys are colorful and unique, and no two are quite the same.
Kansas transfer AJ Storr spoke for most when he specified what he looks for in a program when transferring.
“(What it) comes down to is where I can fit in at the most, and the program overall, the history of the program — if it’s a winning program, and I can see myself playing there. And the play style is similar to something I can fit into,” Storr said in an interview with The Daily Mississippian.
Storr would know better than most — he has played at a different school in each of his four seasons. In fact, he also played each season of high school basketball with a different team, which makes Ole Miss his eighth school in as many years.
Yet Storr does not catch whiplash from his frequent transferring. In fact, he hardly has any trouble adjusting to new programs.
“Basketball … just draws people together so easily,” Storr said. “So I feel like it’s easy. All I’m doing is coming to play basketball, meeting a lot of great people along the way.”
In 2025, the transfer portal for Men’s College Basketball officially opened on March 24 and closed on April 22. Players are not required to commit to a new school within that timeframe. However, they must declare their intention to transfer and enroll in the portal — the steps of which include notifying the Compliance Offer at the player’s current school, watching an instructional video about the portal and listing ideal transfer destinations, per the NCAA.
Grades matter in the transfer process. Student-athletes whose GPAs are below 2.0 are academically ineligible and cannot transfer, per Next College Student Athlete.
Storr says that he has encountered only minor issues in transferring over his credit hours to his new universities.
“Every school doesn’t take certain classes,” Storr said. “(I) had a couple classes that didn’t transfer to other schools, but (I) got that figured out.”
When players formally enter the portal, Storr said, coaches from other programs are allowed to reach out to them or their family members. Players rarely initiate contact with new teams. Storr listed his mother as his contact, and the Ole Miss staff reached out to her.
From there, Storr spoke with head coach Chris Beard over the phone about five or six times. Though he did not tour Ole Miss, those handful of conversations alone were enough to convince him to commit to the Rebels. Of course, he did not make this decision by himself.
“Something me and my family do is we just weigh out the pros and cons of each program,” Storr said. “Whoever has the most pros, that’s who I end up choosing.”
Louisville transfer Koren Johnson spoke about his own experience in the portal. Unlike Storr, Johnson’s stock was low after he missed all but two games of the 2024-25 season with injury. Initially, not many programs expressed interest.
“It started out slow,” Johnson said in a press conference on July 7. “I had some schools in mind, and they kind of didn’t end out well. And that’s when I got a call from my agent, and coach (Wes) Flanigan and coach Beard had reached out.”
Johnson, like Storr, met Beard over the phone. Johnson noted that Beard is not always fond of this method of communication, but he does what is necessary to bring in players. After all, speaking with the head coach carries more weight than speaking with an assistant.
“Coach Flanigan actually said that coach Beard (doesn’t) like talking on the phone,” Johnson said. “We talked for a long time, and they kind of got me excited for Ole Miss.”
Since coaches reach out to players all around the country, transfers often make decisions about programs based on these phone conversations. At SEC Tip Off ‘26 on Oct. 14, transfer guard Ilias Kamardine, who played professionally in France with Jeanne d’Arc Dijon Basket last season, said he received a phone call from Beard around Christmas time last season. This is when he truly began to consider relocating to the United States and playing NCAA college basketball.
In these phone calls, players and coaches discuss more than basketball.
“(We) talked about life,” Johnson said. “(We) talked about the injury I had, and just the experience at Louisville. And then we talked about how I would fit in at Ole Miss, and then he (Beard) just told me about himself and everything.”
When asked about Butler transfer forward Augusto Cassiá in a press conference on June 17, Beard reiterated that these phone conversations are rarely just about how a player will fit into a system — they are deeper than basketball.
“I really like Gusto,” Beard said. “He’s another one of these guys basketball doesn’t define. … The first conversations we had weren’t typical player-coach (or) portal recruiting. We obviously talked about basketball, but we talked about other things.”
Still, why did these players choose Ole Miss over other schools? For some, previous relationships played a role. Storr, it turns out, met Ole Miss coaches and representatives when he entered the transfer portal after the 2023-24 season.
“They were actually recruiting me the second time I entered the portal, so I had talked to them previously,” Storr said in a press conference on June 24.
In the current landscape of college sports, where athletes are transferring at a higher clip than ever before, familiarity with a program can go a long way. Kentucky transfer guard Travis Perry, for example, was heavily recruited by Beard back when the shooting guard was still in high school.
“I love Travis,” Beard said in April per 247sports.com. “I enjoyed recruiting him, getting a relationship with his family. I was really happy for him that he found a great fit and played a great role as a freshman for coach (Mark Pope’s) team.”
Connections with other players, too, can influence a player’s transfer destination. Two friends of Kezza Giffa, a High Point University transfer, both enjoyed their time playing under Beard.
“I chose Ole Miss because I had some friends who played for Coach Beard, and they told me great things about him,” Giffa said in a press conference on July 23.
These friends are former Texas Tech guard Clarence Nadolny, who, like Giffa, is from Paris, France, and former Texas guard Sir’Jabari Rice. Both players were coached by Beard at their respective programs.
Cassiá also knew returning guard Edourdo Klafke. The two were teammates in Brazil a few years ago, and before that, their older relatives were teammates.
“We played together in the NBA Academy (Latin America) for a little bit, and my uncle played with his father,” Cassiá said in a press conference on June 17.
Lastly, talent and charisma draw in players. When asked why Ole Miss was the right school for him, Cassiá pointed directly to coach Beard.
“Right here,” Cassiá said. “That’s the man right there. I mean, can’t go wrong with coach Beard, one of the best coaches in college basketball right now, and I mean, awesome town, great program, doing good things last year and want to do better things this year.”
