Ole Miss basketball officially releases roster for 2023-24 season
Ole Miss basketball on Thursday officially announced its roster for the 2023-24 season.
There weren’t any surprises. Though school started this week, Brandon Murray and Mousa Cisse are still awaiting waivers from the NCAA as double transfers. Murray played previously at LSU and Georgetown. Cisse is a former five-star prospect and played at Memphis and Oklahoma State.
Murray will wear No. 0 for the Rebels, while Cisse is No. 33. The Rebels are entering their first season under head coach Chris Beard. Beard has led three different programs to the NCAA Tournament since 2016. He took Texas Tech to the 2019 national championship game and the 2018 Elite Eight.
In all, he owns a 237-98 record and one of the top winning percentages (70.7) among active coaches in all of college basketball. Beard is 11-5 in the NCAA Tournament over his career, including a perfect 5-0 mark in the opening round.
“I’ll sit around looking and I’m like, ‘Coach did this this fast? He just got here and we built this team this fast?’ This is a (NCAA) tournament team,” all-time Ole Miss great Murphy Holloway recently said of this year’s Rebels. Holloway is serving as a graduate assistant on Beard’s staff.
“Matt Murrell, get that three-ball better, he’s an NBA athlete already. Allen Flanigan, NBA athlete already. Cisse. They’ve all got that athletic ability. Flanigan, I’m a fan. He’s a dawg. He sees the floor well. Great in the open floor. Good passer (and) knows how to get everybody involved.”
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Murrell is one of four holdovers from last year’s team.
He led the team in scoring (14.4 points per game), minutes (34.3 per game) and made three-pointers (62). Murrell over three seasons has totaled 925 points, 253 rebounds, 154 assists and 71 steals. He’s made 140 threes.
Murrell will wear No. 11, just as he has in each of his previous three Ole Miss seasons. One-time Duke transfer and second-year Rebel veteran Jaemyn Brakefield is back, too. He was second on the team in scoring last season (11.1 ppg). He averaged 5.7 rebounds.
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Brakefield will again don No. 4. Sophomore guards TJ Caldwell and Robert Cowherd are No. 2 and 13, respectively.
Ole Miss signed a Top 15 portal class.
The rest of the haul included Jaylen Murray (guard, Saint Peter’s), Jamarion Sharp (center, Western Kentucky) and Austin Nunez (guard, Arizona State. Murray is taking No. 5, while Sharp is No. 3 and Nunez No. 1. Flanigan, the son of first-year Ole Miss assistant Wes Flanigan, is No. 7.
Also rostered are freshmen Cameron Barnes (No. 23), Jacob Gazzo (No. 24) and Rashaud Marshall (No. 25). Marshall was ranked as a four-star and Top 100 recruit by the On3 Industry Ranking.
“It’s been good,” Beard said of his Ole Miss transition, in a previous one-on-one sit-down with the Spirit. “I’ve got a lot of respect for (former Rebel head coach) Kermit (Davis) and what he did here. He’s helped us a lot in the transition, too. We’ve maintained a friendship, which I think speaks a lot about him. He’s just been great.
“And some of the people we were able to inherit, just talented people. Players are doing good. Like most first-year teams, our effort’s been really good this summer, but we’ve got a long ways to grow in terms of execution and things like that. We’re probably no different than other teams in that regard.”
