When Malik Dia put his name in the transfer portal a year ago, he was immediately flooded with interest from schools across the country. The two-time defending national champion UConn Huskies called. So did massive brands like the Indiana Hoosiers and Texas Longhorns. It was the type of recruiting feeding frenzy most kids dream about experiencing one day, with potentially life-changing NIL money attached.
But of all those conversations with coaches, one stood out. Ole Miss Rebels coach Chris Beard met Dia in person at a local coffee shop. The pitch wasn’t about stats, money or any of the other things that often come to the forefront during portal recruiting: It was about winning.
“Coach Beard said Final Four, going after that and winning the whole thing. That’s the one thing he just kept going to over and over,” Dia says. “No other coach mentioned winning as much as he did. Some players would try to look for stuff that’s appealing to them with their own self-achievements, but that was really the pitch to me, talking about winning.”
Twelve months later, Beard’s winning vision for the junior forward and the rest of an Ole Miss roster largely built through the portal has come to life. The Rebels aren’t Final Four bound just yet, but for the second time in program history, Ole Miss advanced to the second weekend of the men’s NCAA tournament, where it will face the Michigan State Spartans in the Sweet 16 in Atlanta on Friday.
“If there is a scoreboard on, you gotta try to win,” Beard said. “Everything we do is competitive, and that’s one thing I try to get across, especially [since] portal recruiting is like speed dating. You’ve got five minutes on the first phone call, 10 minutes on the first Zoom, 30 minutes in the first meeting. And you try to make an impression on that player. So we talk a lot about coming to Ole Miss and helping us win. … It’s rewarding to see some of the things we talked about come to reality.”
Dia’s recruitment was his second time going through the portal process, though a much different experience than his first time in the portal. He started his career just 30 miles from his hometown of Murfreesboro, Tenn., with the Vanderbilt Commodores, but struggled to get consistent playing time. Vanderbilt played 15 games in February and March, but Dia appeared in just five of them and was held scoreless in four of those five. He shot just 30% from the field for the season, a miserable mark for a 6' 9" frontcourt player. His confidence waned. After the season, Dia says he wasn’t given the option to return for his sophomore season by the Vanderbilt coaching staff, so off to the portal he went.
“I got in a dark place after Vandy,” Dia says.
He chose to stay in Nashville, moving to the Belmont Bruins. He scored 24 points in his season opener against the Georgia State Panthers and was off to the races from there, quickly establishing himself as one of the most talented bigs in mid-major college basketball. In all, he averaged nearly 17 points per game in under 25 minutes per game, eye-popping productivity that earned him third-team All-MVC honors.
“When I went to Belmont, my mentality was just to destroy the league,” Dia says. “Transferring down, I was just trying to get my momentum back and I had a coach in Casey [Alexander] who believed in me.”
Dia wanted to test his talents again at the highest level. That’s when Beard came with his winning-above-all pitch that resonated with Dia, and off to Oxford, Miss., he went for his shot at SEC redemption.
Things were far from easy at first. Beard’s summer workouts are notorious for their intensity and attention to detail, a big adjustment for Dia. Signing up to play at Ole Miss meant getting coached harder than Dia had ever been coached before, and naturally it took time for him to settle in. But long term, it’s exactly what Dia says he needed.
“Coach Beard is probably the most intense coach I’ve ever played for, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. That’s a great thing,” Dia said. “I think he’s brought the best out in me each and every day. I can never say there’s a day that I can come in and be chill or cool … if he sees that we’re not bringing it, he’s definitely going to get it out of you.”
Dia started slow. He scored in double figures in just one of his first 12 games at Ole Miss and shot just 41% from the field before Christmas. Doubt about whether he could really play at that level started to creep back in. But Beard never doubted what he had and kept pouring into his talented young big.
“I think the deal with our relationship is me and Dia is, I have high expectations for him. I think he can be an NBA draft pick, and I’m not afraid to say that,” Beard said. “People were talking about, ‘Can he translate from Belmont to the SEC?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s going to happen.’ My deal is can he translate from being a really good college player to a great college player, and then ultimately can he translate that to making money one day at the highest level? I’m hard on him, really hard. I think one day my plan is for him to really thank me for that. It’s the biggest gift I think anybody can give a player is high expectations.”
Said Dia: “I have high expectations for myself, but I feel like Coach Beard is the one person I’ve known in my life who has brought me to higher expectations. [He’s] just pushing me to be a better version of myself each and every day.”
Eventually, the results followed. Dia scored 19-plus points in three of his first four SEC games, capped by a 23-point, 19-rebound domination of the Alabama Crimson Tide’s front line in an upset win in Tuscaloosa, Ala. And in Ole Miss’s round-of-32 win over the Iowa State Cyclones, Dia was the best big on the floor, showcasing his diverse offensive game with a pair of difficult threes to go with his success around the rim against a physical Iowa State frontcourt. Dia finished with 18 points and eight rebounds in one of the biggest wins in Ole Miss history. For a player two years removed from being told to find a new home and forced to transfer down, it’s a remarkable rise … and one that might not be done just yet.
In the moments after beating Iowa State, Dia took a moment to think back to that first coffee shop meeting with Beard, where his future coach sold visions of success Ole Miss had never seen before. The smile couldn’t be wiped off his face.
“To be a part of something like this is just insane,” Dia says.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Once Forced to Transfer Down, Malik Dia Now Into Sweet 16 With Ole Miss.
