BRACKET WATCH: Ole Miss opens preseason camp in NCAA Tournament field projections
The 2025-26 college basketball season is still over a month away from beginning but preseason camp for Ole Miss opens up this week and the Rebels have NCAA Tournament goals once again.
Chris Beard enters his third year in Oxford and coming off the program’s first NCAA Tournament bid since 2019. The expectation is Ole Miss will be among the Field of 68 for a second straight season.
ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has been posting monthly updates to his ‘Bracketology’ through the Summer and on Tuesday his September projections dropped.
Lunardio currently projects Ole Miss as the 9 Seed in the West Region (San Jose) and playing 8 Seed Cincinnati in the first round in St. Louis. The four-team quadrant includes Purdue as a projected 1 Seed and taking on either Norfolk State or Long Island.
The Rebels are among the 14 Southeastern Conference teams projected to make the NCAA Tournament field, according to Lunardi.
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Ole Miss returns two contributors from last season in starting forward Malik Dia and bench player Eduardo Klafke. The latter is expected to take on a larger role on a team that has 11 newcomers to the roster this season.
“I think one of the weapons of our teams this year, one of the positives if we execute and develop our team effectively, would be our depth,” Beard said earlier this month. “We’ve got a lot of confidence in a lot of different players right now. I think we can play different ways. Whether we can play three bigs at one time and get big or we can play small ball. We can pressure you defensively, we can back up with a little bit of length and athleticism. So, we’re excited from a coaching standpoint.”
The Rebels are anticipated to play an exhibition game in late October before starting the season in early November.
