Chris Beard shares how Ole Miss landed Ilias Kamardine from Europe

No player in Ole Miss basketball’s 2025-26 class will have to travel further to get to Oxford than Ilias Kamardine. The 6-foot-5 combo guard signed with the Rebels this offseason by way of France, where he played professional basketball for JD Dijon Basket.

Ole Miss coach Chris Beard cited assistant Brian Burg as playing a key role in recruiting Kamardine. He also noted how social media has allowed for more international players to make their way to America to play college basketball, with Kamardine being just one of several instances in recent years.

“It’s just such a small world now,” he said. “You can literally know about a guy in Spain or Russia or France or Italy just like you know of somebody in Jackson, Mississippi. So I think just the access to the information. Basketball is a small world and, if you’re really good at it, there’s all sorts of connectors.

“Certainly on our staff, Brian Burg was the lead recruiter and everyone on our staff did a great job on these players. We were able to develop a relationship with Ilas and his family, his representation, his basketball family. So just excited that he trusts us with his next step in his basketball future.”

Kamardine is 21 and has been playing professional basketball in France since he was 16. He averaged 8.0 points, 1.6 rebounds and 1.9 assists through 29 games in the 2024-25 season. The guard is also a former MVP and champion of the FIBA U20 Eurobasket.

We’ve seen a lot of talent come from France in the past few seasons with the past two No. 1 NBA Draft picks, Victor Wembanyama and Zaccharie Risacher, both being French. In college basketball this season, Kamardine will be joined by fellow Frenchman Roman Domon, who will play for Murray State.

But players are coming from all over the globe. Two such examples, Egor Demin (BYU) and Kasparas Jakucionis (Illinois), even went one-and-done and are expected to be first-round selections in the 2025 NBA Draft.

Kamardine will hope that he can perhaps find similar success in his first season with the Rebels. He joins a team that brought in a transfer class of seven players and will have to compete for playing time with several other experienced players. Either way, expect him to make some noise as he looks to continue the trend of recent success for international players in the NCAA.