Saint Peter’s transfer Jaylen Murray is here to help Ole Miss shore up its most glaring weakness
Saint Peter’s point guard Jaylen Murray was one of the final pieces added to a lauded off-season transfer portal haul for first-year Ole Miss head coach Chris Beard and staff.
He could end up being one of the most important.
Ole Miss is returning four players off a team that last season won only three SEC games: Matthew Murrell, Jaemyn Brakefield, TJ Caldwell and Robert Cowherd. All but Brakefield are guards.
Each is better suited off the ball, however, and after some transfers out and a bit of exhausted eligibility, the Rebels were left with little or nothing by way of proven production at the position.
Beard, in response, pulled the 5-foot-11, 175-pound Murray from Seton Hall, Richmond and others. He also reeled in Arizona State transfer Austin Nunez, a former Top 100 recruit. Beard said this week nothing is settled as far as starters or rotation in general.
But it’s all but a given Murray AND Nunez will factor in somewhere.
Neither was recruited to sit.
“When I first had contact with coach Beard, I just felt the respect he had for me,” Murray said on Monday. “I’ve got a lot of respect for him. Previous years, I saw him coach at different places and win. So, just off that, I knew that me coming here would be a great opportunity.”
Murray, who earned All-MAAC honors as a freshman, was the No. 20 point guard and the No. 101 overall player in On3’s transfer portal player rankings. He has two years of eligibility remaining.
“Wrapping up Jaylen Murray was big,” On3 national college basketball analyst Jamie Shaw said, in a previous interview with the Ole Miss Spirit around the time of Murray’s commitment. “That kind of rounds out the players. He’s the point guard.
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“They have great wings, rim-protecting bigs (and) guys that have experience and age. They needed that sure-fire point guard. Grabbing Murray rounds out that group.”
Murray averaged 12.5 points, 2.9 rebounds and 2.3 assists as a sophomore last season.
He scored 20 or more points in three of his last five games.
Murray is originally from The Bronx, New York, and has a career 35 percent shooting clip from three for his career. Other notable transfers for the Rebels are wings Allen Flanigan (Auburn) and Brandon Murray (LSU/Georgetown) and centers Moussa Cisse (Oklahoma State) and Jamarion Sharp (Western Kentucky).
“It’s a little different from New York to Mississippi,” Murray said. “But I like it. I like the people out here. Just the way things go out here, it’s a little slow, especially where I’m from. But I like this place. It’s good a community out here.”
“There’s different ways we can play, whether that be extending our defense or guarding the ball screens in different ways,” Beard added. “Offensively, we have a lot of talented players and can play in different ways. We can play through the post, we can play a five-out, we can play at different tempos.
“So, that’s been a positive.”
