TRANSCRIPT: Everything Ole Miss coach Chris Beard said Tuesday — including on Tom Brady and winning

OXFORD, Miss. — Ole Miss head men’s basketball coach Chris Beard met with media Tuesday, giving insight into his team, how things are progressing with so many newcomers on the roster, and his study of Tom Brady.

Here’s everything Coach Beard said:

Question: How have you seen Malik (Dia) maybe evolve or grow more into that leadership role from March to where we are now?

Coach Beard: I think it’s early, but I think Malik’s trying. I think we had some really good postseason meetings with him that kind of bled into the early summer. And so, um, what I would say, I actually met with Malik today one on one for a while, and just complimenting him on his effort. You know, like, if you’re going to make some improvements and if you’re going to make some changes, the first thing is you you have to want to embrace that. And it’s one thing to sit around and talk about it. It’s a whole nother thing to actually try to execute it on a daily basis. Um, but I think he’s, uh, he’s working on just kind of his maturity, um, in terms of, you know, handling success and handling adversity. Uh, he’s working on trying to be a leader in his own way. And really, that all starts with relationships with his teammates. Um, so I think it’s very visible that he’s a returner. It’s very visible that he’s been in this program before, and so I’m proud of him. He’s had a good first week in terms of just trying some new things. Last year, as a new player, as you can imagine, you’re just trying to survive. You know, you’re taking it all in. This year, he seems to be a little bit more confident in himself, not pressing so much on the court and off the court. And he’s doing a good job getting to know his teammates early on.

Question: Augusto (Cassia) just pointed at you as to why he came to Oxford. But what’s, from your perspective, that relationship looked like so far to bring him?

Coach Beard: Yeah, I really I really like Gusto. You know, he’s another one of these guys basketball doesn’t define. He’s had an amazing early part of his life, you know, being from Brazil, coming to the States, pursuing an education through basketball. So he’s he’s somebody I have a lot of respect for. The first conversations we had weren’t kind of typical player-coach-portal recruiting. We obviously talked about basketball, but we talked about other things. I think he has a chance to be one of the leaders of this team because of his composure. He doesn’t seem to get too high or too low. He’s earning our trust, and at the same time, we’re trying to earn his trust as well. But he appears to be a guy that if he tells you he’s going to do something, he’s going to try to do it. You can have a grown man conversation with him. Basketball, just really intrigued. He’s a really a positionless player. He’s got size. He can also stretch the floor like Dia and other guys that can shoot the basketball. He brings a confidence about him. You know, we’re looking for guys that that know how to win. We’re looking for guys that have been coached. And, Thad Matta at Butler, in my opinion, is one of the best coaches in college basketball, period. I don’t have a personal relationship with Coach, but I think there’s some respect there. And and speaking to him about Gusto, he said some pretty strong statements, you know, that he he believed in him as a young player. Uh, Gusto had some adversity with some injuries. Never was able to play a full season. So we’re hoping he can have his most healthy year of basketball. But I think he can really help this team because he can play different positions. He’s a mature guy. He’s a big part of what we’re doing here.

Question: A week into the summer drills here, just your early thoughts on Corey Chest and what he’s going to bring for you.

Coach Beard: Yeah, I think Corey, there are two different ways to look at Corey. You look at him as an SEC transfer that had some real moments in the league as a young player, which is really hard to do. Or you can look at the other side of the coin where he’s still a young player himself, you know, just a sophomore in the SEC. So, there’s a role for him. There’s some urgency for him to contribute on a daily basis and be a big part of our team this year on the court. But we’re also spending a lot of time and effort on player development and developing his game both physically and mentally where we’ll see where he ends up. So it’s always a good thing to have young talent in your program that can also contribute physically while they’re still trying to kind of grow into being a player. He’s an athletic guy. He’s got some competitiveness to him. He’s a real player development guy. He’s got to work on his skill level, and he embraces that. I don’t want to speak for him, but one of the decisions, I think, for him to come here was kind of the vision that we laid out for him, not only day one or season one, but also the future. He’s an athletic guy. He’s a great teammate, all the guys, myself included, enjoy being around him. But like Zach (Day) said, you know, his athleticism is a game changer. He can do some things that other guys can’t do. So it’s really that, you know, two sides of the coin. You know, what can he do to help us today, and then where could this guy be in the future if he works on his game?

Question: You mentioned Gusto having a chance to lead. But could this team have two Brazilian leaders? What is kind of the expectation for him or what? What do you need from Klafke this year? Gusto could be a leader. Klafke,the other Brazilian, could he step into that role?

Coach Beard: Yeah. For sure. So, you know, every team has leaders in different ways. I think a lot of times when you think of the leader, you think of Tom Brady or Kobe Bryant. Uh, there’s no denying that leadership is is special. But every guy on the team has to be a leader in his own way. So first thing that we try to explain to the players, I really believe this is, you know, there’s no leader if there’s not followers, you know, like, Tom Brady, for example, he was — I studied him a lot this off season— and he said it himself in several interviews over the years. It’s like, you know, I get the identity of being the quarterback. It comes with the job. But, you know, I can’t lead if other guys don’t want to follow. And so, certainly understanding that with the players, so what most people might perceive as our leader, the captain, whoever goes out there and shake hands with the other team’s player and does the coin flip or whatever, no coin flip in basketball, you know what I’m saying. That guy’s not a leader unless he has people in the organization that want to follow. So trying to encourage all these guys to pick and choose their moments and lead and lead in certain ways. Gusto has a chance to be a leader because of his experience, his age, his demeanor, his life experiences. He’s been through a lot. Klafke has a chance to lead this year. He’s he’s one of three returners on the team. Or, Max was on the team last year. He didn’t get to play, but one of four guys that wore the jersey last year. Klafke also can really lead through his effort, crowd favorite early on, just with the energy he plays with and that bleeds into everybody else. So, yeah, guys lead in different ways. And then from time to time over the years, you’re you’re blessed to have that special guy that wants it all on his shoulders. Too early for us to identify that yet, but what’s a given and kind of a non-negotiable is everybody on this team is going to have to find their ways to lead in certain ways. And everybody’s going to have to, you know, be a follower as well.

Question: Last week, I think it was confirmed that you guys are hosting Miami for that ACC/SEC matchup. What do you think about drawing them and having them here?

Coach Beard: Yeah, So looking forward to the ACC challenge, Miami coming to Oxford. Home game. That’s an important thing for a lot of reasons. You know, we want to try to have quality opponents for the season ticket holders. Coach Lucas, a friend of mine known him since he was a player and competed against him over the years. I have a lot of respect for him, most recently what he did at Duke. And so we know this about Miami, hey’re going to be talented. They did a really good job in recruiting the spring portal. And then, you know, Jay has a lot of just experience in basketball. His dad, his brother, he’s a great player himself. So, very similar, I think, to kind of the Louisville game last year. Louisville being a first year program and stuff. I kind of had a feeling that I felt really strongly about it, that Louisville was going to be a really good opponent and NCAA tournament team; whereas, most people kind of disagreed with that. I think the same thing could be said for Miami. I think their coaching staff knows what they’re doing. They did a great job assembling talent on the roster, so it’d be a great opportunity game for us.

Question: Again. So many new guys are having to kind of mix in and gel. You feel like where you’d like to be a week in the summer, whatever mile marker was in your head.

Coach Beard: Yeah. you know, a lot of urgency on that. We’re just fighting time. You know, like you just want to have a team meeting and a team exercise. You want to just kind of max the 24 hours every day, but it is the summertime. And a big part of summer is balance. We all know what’s coming when the grind starts, so it’s kind of a fine line. We want to work really hard during the summer, but we also want to encourage these guys to have some fun. Balance is a big part of our process, whether these players are in a relationship or a couple of these guys have dogs, which is a huge commitment. All these guys have a passion off the court. And so it’s kind of a fine line in the summer, we want to work extremely hard, but there’s great value in just a natural off day to where these guys can kind of just on their own terms, you know, spend time with each other. And I think we had a really good first week with guys’ willingness to do that. I noticed the simple things like when we meet as a team, is it always the same guys sitting at the same table, or do we have some variety, some diversity and who guys are hanging out with. And we’ve seen that. And again I give those four returning players a lot of credit for what they’re trying to help their teammates get comfortable in Oxford. And I think the new guys have come in here with a lot of courage. You know, this is not a team where a transfer can just come in and you kind of fit in. This is a team where literally, you know, where Dia and Klafke played minutes last year. And other than that, everybody’s new. So, but I know the the first week felt good. We had a lot of energy around the program. I think we got better in our three team practices. We’ve got some guys already making some strides in the weight room – trying to take some weight off a few guys, trying to put some weight on a few guys. Academically, we’re off to a good start. About half our team is in academic classes this first session of summer. We set the same goal that we’ve had since 1999. We’re trying to make all A’s and B’s as a program. From time to time, you got to fight for a C. Uh, but the effort is, you know, where we have a standard around here, and so week one felt good. We’ve got this week, and then next week, then the July 4th we’re going to take a few days off. So we’re just fighting time more than anything, you know, just trying to get as much done as we can every day. But again, also letting the guys enjoy Oxford. This is a great college town. It’s summertime. We all know what’s ahead here in a few months. And so it’s a fine line for sure.

Question: You mentioned looking at Tom Brady. What what made you kind of want to study him a little bit? And I was wondering, have you met him at all crossed paths with him?

Coach Beard: I don’t think I’ve met Tom Brady. I might have shook his hand at some event, but I’ve never met him in terms of quality conversation or anything, but, one thing that I’ve always done is each offseason I’ll try to study winning. It doesn’t always have to happen in the form of basketball. It doesn’t always even have to happen to be athletic minded, but just trying to kind of study successful people and try to kind of learn what makes them tick. And so certainly with Brady, what he did in football kind of speaks for itself. And I think retirement this past year or so, he’s been pretty vocal. And, does an interview from time to time. I was always really interested in the guy that will really talk and not all the fluff. That’s one of the cool things about today’s world with some of these podcasts and stuff, it seems like some of these winners, elite people, will talk a little bit more free than you used to back in the day when you were on the Roy Firestone sports. Do you know Roy Firestone is?. One of the cool things about it are some of these relaxed interviews, you know, like back in the day when I was with Coach Knight, the only way people could really get access to Coach is watch, like post game press conferences. Or maybe if he did like a live with Larry King or something from time to time. And so you’re just starved for information on these people. But now it’s like, you know, people just talk on a daily basis. So I think just the access to information, then you kind of weed it out. You know, you can kind of tell if it’s kind of fluffy… If you listen to a guy long enough and you study about him or her, you can kind of understand what makes him tick. So, with Brady, it’s like the ultimate kind of chip on his shoulder, you know, I guess wasn’t supposed to play in college and ends up being the best player, wasn’t supposed to be a draft pick but ends up being the best player. All of his teams won. I think his relationship with his teammates, relationship with his organizations, coaches, owners, the whole deal. So I really enjoyed trying to learn as much as I could about him. And then ultimately, I get it down to like, the Cliffs Notes version, then try to give that information to the players. I don’t expect, uh, Gusto to spend all the time that I spend on those projects, but if I can get him to the bottom line, if I can give him five minutes worth of information that took me four months to gather, I’ve always thought that’s kind of one of my responsibilities as the coach is to continue to kind of help these guys, educate them. So, yeah, I spent a lot of time this offseason, spring, looking at Tom Brady.

Question: Are you planning to do fireside chats again?

Coach Beard: Yes. It’s been good to us over the years. Direct communication with the students. And then I think other people enjoy just watching it. And so, yeah, we definitely need to do that. We’re looking forward to year three. I think our relationship with our students has grown so much from the first season to last season. And it’s just really an important relationship to us. So we’ve been meeting on all things kind of marketing and stuff like that on a weekly basis, since the Michigan State game. We’ve added some new people to the team here. So yeah, for sure, we’re looking forward to to doing the best job we can to kind of have that relationship with the students. And the fireside chat is definitely something we should bring back.