Everything Chris Beard said ahead of Ole Miss’ first-round showdown with UNC

Ole Miss men’s basketball is in the NCAA Tournament for just the 10th time in the program’s 115-year history. 

The 6-seed Rebels (22-11) are set to meet 11-seed North Carolina (23-13) on Friday at approximately 3:05 p.m. CT on TNT. The Tar Heels advanced as the winner of the play-in game. 

North Carolina is a 1.50-point favorite, according to FanDuel, while ESPN’s Basketball Power Index favors the Tar Heels as the winner at 56.3 percent. KenPom has Ole Miss squeaking out a 78-77 win with a 54 percent win probability. 

Ole Miss is playing the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Second-year head coach Chris Beard met the media Thursday to preview the weekend ahead. Here’s everything he had to say.

ON PREPARING FOR NORTH CAROLINA 

BEARD: We’ve had plenty of time, period. Carolina’s a special team. To me, it starts with their coach. A lot of respect for Coach and everything he’s done in basketball, not only at North Carolina but basketball in general. Used to love to watch him as a player.

Coach Williams has been a friend and mentor to me. I have a special relationship with Coach. So always respecting the Carolina program from afar has been real. I think their team, it’s an interesting team to look at. I know there’s a lot of dialog. But when you get in the guts of their season, just a lot of one- or two-possession games that could have gone the other way and Carolina’s seeding could have been completely different.

It’s March. It’s a 68-team tournament, and everything you’ve done before doesn’t matter. They’re talented, have great guard play, good interior play, have a balance between young talent and experienced players who have been around a long time.

Defensively, they have a real identity. Offensively, they have an identity, and it’s still North Carolina. The way they can get the ball up the court, feels like Dean Smith’s still sitting over there.

ON SEAN PEDULLA’S FAMILIARITY WITH UNC:

BEARD: More than anything, Sean can share some personal experiences of some of his games against North Carolina. I think he played them five times. So in terms of the core game planning, scouting, not so much, but not just this game. In today’s world of college basketball, with so many transfers and new players, every single time we play, we’re going to have a player that either played with one of the opposing players or played against them.

So it’s something that we do kind of mention the first day of scouting. We let our players have a voice when we introduce the opponent.

ON THE STATUS OF MIKEAL BROWN-JONES

BEARD: Mikeal, we hope he joins the team this weekend. He’s been great supporting the team from afar. We would not be here today if it wasn’t for Mikeal. He had a great season. We hope we can play long enough to get him back on the court with us.

ON THE NOISE THAT COMES WITH THE NCAA TOURNAMENT

BEARD: First of all, I don’t know (about the fraud comments). Was the guy doing us a favor, giving us some locker room material? We don’t need that. If I had a younger team, I would have called him and thanked him for saying that because that’s great motivation.

But with this older team that we have, experienced guys, we spent zero seconds talking about it. I got asked a question in the local media the other day so it was brought to my attention.

It’s what’s great about college basketball. Everybody’s got an opinion. It’s the spice before the game. Really spent no time worrying about that.

ON THE CHALLENGE OF OPENING WEEKEND 

BEARD: Very, very difficult. A couple things. One, you never take for granted coming to the NCAA Tournament. It’s really difficult no matter what your conference, no matter what your situation. These things don’t just happen because of what’s on your jersey.

So every team in this tournament has earned the right to be here through different paths. Just always remind myself and our staff and our players, this is really difficult. Just take a deep breath and smell the roses a little bit like, you know, we’re here.

In my opinion, the most important game in any tournament is the first game. It’s something Coach Knight talked about often. The first time he said it, I didn’t have to put it in my journal. I heard it, I thought about it, and I think about it every day since.

For us, with our team, we set up every tournament as a four-team tournament. We never look that far ahead, whether it’s the conference tournament or now the national tournament. We’re in a four-team bracket here. We had to wait a couple days to find out who the fourth team was, North Carolina.

The first game in the tournament is the most important, period. Sometimes, or often, the most challenging game too for so many reasons.

ON LEADING FOUR SEPARATE PROGRAMS TO THE NCAA TOURNAMENT

BEARD: Appreciate that question. We also made the NCAA Tournament when I was at Angelo State, the NCAA Division II tournament. I’m proud to have coached so many great players and great teams to play in national tournaments.

I think if there is one similarity between them all, it’s pretty simple to describe. It’s the players. We’ve had good players on all the teams that we’ve coached that have played in the postseason. This year’s team is no different.

We have a balanced team. We have a lot of individual good players, but I think the coaching gets conversation. The games, the match-ups is a big thing. You hear people talk about it. But above all, it’s the players. If you’re in this tournament and you get to the second round or the second weekend or ultimately that Monday night, the thing that you can be assured of is you’ve got good players playing their best basketball when it matters most. For us, this is March.

ON THE STRENGTH OF THE SEC IN PREPARING FOR THE POSTSEASON 

BEARD: It’s something that the older I’ve got, or more experienced, whichever way you look at it, I’ve thought about more. Earlier in my career, you heard that. What are you talking about? These guys grow up playing every day. They play three games a day sometimes in the grass roots circuit of AAU. They’re young by nature.

I think the more you really think about it, there is a valid question, something on the other side of the coin. Is your team healthy this time of year, not only physically, but mentally? I think a big part of what we tried to do is when our last game happened in the SEC tournament in Nashville — the first thing was two-fold.

“We’ve got to rest physically, and we’ve got to reset mentally.”

Because this really is a new season, and you’ve got to come into this season not thinking about anything from the past and certainly can’t look too, too much forward.

It will be interesting to see. Statements like that this might have been the best conference in the history of college basketball, I think, are fair and valid up until the last game of the regular season. Now we’ll see what happens in the tournament. I think if the SEC can represent, then I think the statement that this is one of the best conferences ever will be true.

But a lot is still yet to be determined. If you’re going to write an article or a book about this, there’s a lot of chapters left. Because this is the NCAA Tournament, where a win, where it matters most.

ON HIS FAVORITE PLACE TO EAT IN OXFORD

BEARD: That’s a tough question when you ask a coach that. You don’t want to offend anybody. The political answer is I like all the places in Oxford, which I do. But I eat lunch at Rascals a lot. It’s a gas station that has grill food. Get a piece of pizza at Funkys. I get fine dining at Lenora’s.

Oxford being a college town, late-night options are not many. I’ve been happy to get back to my roots of just McDonald’s. 24-hour McDonald’s. Filet-O-Fish on a healthy night. Quarter Pounder with cheese is the go-to. Ask for the fries to be fresh, even if you have to wait a little bit.