The first call came 30 seconds after Sean Pedulla entered his name in the NCAA’s transfer portal last spring. And for the next two weeks, his cell phone blew up with recruiting pitches from coaches around the country.
There was no secret why the 6-foot-1 Pedulla — who last season averaged 16.4 points, 4.3 rebounds and 4.6 assists in earning third-team All-ACC honors at Virginia Tech — was in such high demand. True point guards are the rarest of commodities in a game that has given itself over to backcourt play. Pedulla was one of the best in the portal.
His recruitment could have been a drawn-out process, but it ended the moment he sat down with Ole Miss coach Chris Beard, who didn’t have to watch a ton of film to be convinced Pedulla was his guy. Beard remembered Pedulla from the 2022 NCAA Tournament, when he was coaching Texas and the Longhorns’ first-round opponent was Virginia Tech. They won, but Pedulla did everything he could to try and prevent that outcome, scoring 19 points, 13 of them in the game’s final 4:30.
After Pedulla left Virginia Tech, Ole Miss quickly got in touch. And when Pedulla and Beard met for the first time, their conversation got right to the point.
“I liked a lot of different things about Ole Miss and coach Beard,” Pedulla told Hoops HQ. “But it was mainly the vision I had for myself going into my last year of college basketball. Coach Beard had the same vision, and he laid it all out on the table. Our goals aligned as far as winning, as far as getting me to play professionally. Rounding out my game. It really comes down to winning. I covet that. Coach Beard does as well. He said he had a position I could fill. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.”
Last summer, Beard spoke of his plans for Pedulla, and they have come to pass.
“He’s going to be a big part of this team,” Beard told me. “He’ll run the team and be a point guard, but he’s also a natural scorer. Last year there was too much pressure on JuJu [Jaylen Murray, who started at point for the Rebels]. Sean’s a tough guy; very competitive.”
Five games into the season, the pairing of Pedulla and No. 23/24-ranked Ole Miss (5-0) has worked out as well as Beard could have hoped. Pedulla leads the Rebels in scoring (14.4 ppg) and steals (15) and is second in assists. He’s shooting .394 from 3-point range and .846 from the free-throw line. And his assist-to-turnover ratio is a solid 2-1.
The Rebels’ schedule is about to take a drastic turn upward; on Nov. 28 they play BYU in the Rady Children’s Invitational in San Diego. Their second-round opponent will be NC State or Purdue.
Pedulla points to a 91-74 win at Illinois in a late October exhibition game as proof Ole Miss is more than ready to handle itself against top-tier competition. One of his goals when he hit the portal eject button was to land with a team capable of playing in the NCAA Tournament.
“I think we can go as far as we want to, for a number of reasons,” Pedulla says. “The main reason is coach Beard’s done it before, at a level where it wasn’t expected, and people weren’t expecting a lot from the group of players he had. We have an older veteran team trying to improve every day. It all goes back to winning. We have a lot of guys who have yet to win at the level we want to. Ten seniors all with that last chance to do it together.”
Andersson Garcia is diversifying his game
When Andersson Garcia led Texas A&M in scoring in a victory over Lamar earlier this month, it was one of those man bites dog moments. Garcia — who somehow resisted the lure of baseball in his native Dominican Republic and gravitated toward basketball — scored a career-high 15 points and knocked down a pair of 3-pointers against the Cardinals. If he had grabbed 15 rebounds, no one would have given it a second thought. But 15 points and two 3s?
Who are you, and what have you done with Andersson Garcia?
Oh, it was the real Garcia alright. But the 6-foot-7, 220-pound senior has done something with his game. The man known as the “Dominican Rodman,” for the search-and-destroy mentality and effort he brings to rebounding spent the summer hoisting 3-pointers. And he counted them, too.
“I used to shoot at least 500 a day,” Garcia says. “But sometimes I shot 2,000. It was always like, ‘Do I have a little time before class? Maybe I can get in the gym and shoot again.’ ”
Garcia wasn’t the only one counting his shots.
“One month he led our team with 22,000 attempts,” Texas A&M assistant Lyle Wolf says.
So why did one of the most relentless rebounders and aggressive defenders in college basketball suddenly become offensive minded? It’s the lure of the NBA.
“I’m speculating a little bit,” Wolf says. “But if he can make catch and shoot 3s on a consistent basis, he has a shot. He can defend at that level. No question he rebounds at that level.”
Every player with NBA aspirations must have one next-level skill, and for Garcia, that’s rebounding. Texas A&M head coach Buzz Williams explains it this way: “How he processes rebounding is savant-ish.”
Garcia wouldn’t disagree with that assessment.
“it’s not everybody that thinks about rebounding like that,” Garcia says. “I call it a ‘predictable shot.’ You need to know what kinds of shots [opponents] are going to take so you can get a better angle to rebound.”
Garcia began his college career at Mississippi State, then coached by Ben Howland. Assistant coach Korey McCray found him at Hamilton Heights Academy in Chattanooga, Tennessee. On a team loaded with talent, Garcia stood out. McCray told Howland he needed to go see Garcia for himself, and it was love at first sight.
“He’s the ultimate team guy,” says Howland, the former Pittsburgh, UCLA and Mississippi State coach who’s now retired and living in California. “He’s all about winning. It’s more about him than it is about coaching. He has a great motor and a big heart. He understands that if he makes the effort, he’ll get more than his share of rebounds. It’s all about effort.”
Around the Rim
• The SEC got off to a great start in the holiday tournament season, bagging two championships and finishing runner-up in another before Thanksgiving. Texas (5-1) went first, taking out Syracuse and Saint Joseph’s to win the UKG Legends Classic. Tre Johnson, who is having a monster freshman season, earned MVP honors, but another huge key, and the reason the Longhorns were a preseason Top 25 pick, was Kansas State transfer Arthur Kaluma (14.7 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 2.8 apg, 0.7 spg, 0.8 bpg, .574 FG), who’s more versatile than a pair of khaki pants.
Kaluma delivered 16 points, 10 rebounds, four assists, a steal and a block against Syracuse, then 14 points, four boards, four assists a steal and three blocks against St. Joe’s to earn a spot on the all-tournament team. He’s the positionless player coach Rodney Terry needed to complete his team. So far, so good.
“He’s been around winning at the highest level [Creighton, K-State],” Terry says. “He understands what that entails.”
• The big story in Tennessee’s victory in the Baha Mar Championship was the play of fifth-year senior Chaz Lanier, who so far has more than capably replaced the seemingly unreplaceable scoring output of last year’s SEC Player of the Year and consensus All-American Dalton Knecht. That is reason enough for Vol fans to be excited, but if you dig into Tennessee’s advanced analytics, there are a couple of other statistics to suggest it could be as good or better than last year’s team that advanced to the Elite Eight.
One, the Vols (6-0 and ranked No. 7 in the latest Associated Press poll and No. 6 in the USA TODAY Coaches poll) are rated No. 2 in the country in KenPom’s defensive efficiency metric. No surprise there; under coach Rick Barnes they’re in the top five year after year. But in Zakai Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack, Tennessee has two of the country’s elite defenders. Backing up Zeigler and Mashack is 6-foot-11 Ohio State transfer Felix Okpara, the best shot blocker Barnes has had in his 10 seasons in Knoxville. Another transfer, 6-foot-10 Igor Milicic, is also a good rim protector.
The second stat sounds elementary, but Tennessee can make layups at a much higher level than Barnes’ previous five teams. The Vols are No. 16 in the country in 2-point percentage (61.0) and No. 6 in effective field-goal percentage (61.2). Last season, they struggled at times making shots at the rim and shot 50.8 from 2 (159th). Their losses usually started with a frustrating series of missed chippies in the paint, followed by rushed 3-pointers to try and get back into the game, resulting in extended scoring dry spells. In 2023, they shot 50.3 (186th) from 2, in 2022 it was an abysmal 48.5 (227th), and it wasn’t much better in ’21 (49.6, 175th).
This year, Tennessee landed four players from the portal, including Lanier and Milicic, who can all make layups, which is easier said than done. And they’ve got two pogo sticks in the dunker’s spot — Cade Phillips and Okpara. The result is two-fold — points are easier to come by, and the Vols are no longer reliant on Knecht scoring 35 to 40 points to win.
• Vanderbilt advanced to the finals of the Charleston Classic, where it lost to a well-coached Drake team. But that doesn’t diminish how far the Commodores have come under first-year coach Mark Byington, who had to put a team together from nearly scratch after replacing Jerry Stackhouse last spring.
The Commodores beat Nevada and Seton Hall to get to the title game and are 6-1, their best start since 2007-08.
Vanderbilt is getting solid play from its all-transfer starting five; the Commodores, despite playing the 16th fastest tempo in the country, were second in the national in assist-to-turnover ratio before the tournament. So far, 6-foot-0 junior North Texas transfer Jason Edwards, who has no conscience when it comes to pulling the trigger and is averaging 17.1 points, and 6-foot-7 junior Boston College transfer Devin McGlockton, who is averaging 13.1 points and 7.9 boards, have led the way, but others have stepped forward at various times, including former Michigan State guard A.J. Hoggard (11.2 ppg) and former Virginia Tech forward Tyler Nickel (10.9 ppg).
Vandy’s weakness has been 3-point shooting; the Commodores are making just 29.2% (280th nationally) of their attempts from behind the arc and surrendering 37.7 (311th).
The Commodores’ strength might be something far less tangible than shooting percentages — toughness.
“It’s something I’m a huge believer in,” Byington says. “Every good team has it. I don’t care what sport. You’re going to go into some of these games and the talent’s going to be equal. And the X’s and O’s are probably going to be equal. The separator a lot of the times is going to be toughness plays and toughness mentality. We try to create it in our off-season work and our practices, and we’ve done a great job here. There are obviously different ways we can improve. But I like where we are at this point.”
• Like his counterpart at the SEC’s other Mississippi school, Chris Beard, Mississippi State’s Chris Jans is a former junior college coach who learned at that level how to build teams in a hurry. Jans has led the Bulldogs—who entered the Associated Press Top 25 this week (25th)—to the NCAA Tournament in his first two seasons, and in 2024-25, they’ve started 5-0 for the third consecutive year. It bodes well for March.
State’s start includes wins over Utah and at SMU, and it’s no surprise who’s leading the way. Josh Hubbard, the 5-foot-11 combo guard, paces the Bulldogs in scoring (20.2), 3-point percentage (.500) and free-throw percentage (.900) and is shooting .500 from the field. He’s second on the team in assists. But Mississippi State is far from a one-man show. Six other players are averaging between 7.0 and 11.6 points per game. Among that group is 6-foot-10, 230-pound redshirt junior KeShawn Murphy, who is putting together his best season. He leads the ‘Dogs in rebounding and blocked shots and is second in scoring.
• Before the season began, Alabama coach Nate Oats probably wasn’t expecting he’d have to rely on freshman LeBaron Philon as much as he has. But an injury to probable starting guard Chris Youngblood, last year’s American Athletic Conference Co-Player of the Year at USF, shuffled the rotation a bit. Youngblood probably won’t be back until next month.
The 6-foot-4 Philon, a native of Mobile, Alabama, was rated by On3 as the No. 5 point guard in the class of 2024 and by ESPN as the No. 32 player overall. So far, he’s more than lived up to that billing. Philon, who won SEC Freshman of the Week honors on Nov. 25 after delivering 16 points, nine assists, seven rebounds, two steals and a block against Illinois, ranks third in the SEC in assists (5.2 apg). That’s fourth among Division I freshmen.
He’s the first Alabama rookie since Ronald Steele in 2004 to rack up at least 26 assists in the first five games of the season. Philon is averaging 12.8 points, 5.2 assists and 4.2 rebounds, and he’s handed out nine dimes twice — against Big Ten powers Illinois and Purdue.
Games to Watch
Alabama vs. Rutgers in Las Vegas, on Wednesday, Nov. 27. (TBS). AKA the Clifford Omoruyi Bowl, this game in the new Player’s Era Festival has intrigue because it will pit the former Rutgers big man against his old team, for which he led the Big 10 in blocked shots last season. This will also be a good chance to see the Scarlet Knights’ two five-star freshmen, 6-foot-6 shooting guard Dylan Harper (the consensus No. 3 player in the class of 2024) and 6-foot-8 small forward Ace Bailey (No. 2), both of whom have more than lived up to their pre-college billing.
Texas A&M vs. Creighton in Las Vegas, on Wednesday, Nov. 27 (Max). Here’s another doozy in the Player’s Era Festival. Creighton (4-1), behind center Ryan Kalkbrenner, is the No. 2 in the country in 2-point percentage (68.8), which doesn’t leave a lot of offensive rebounds for the Aggies (4-1) — who lead the nation in offensive rebound percentage (46.3) — to gobble up.
Florida vs. Wake Forest in Orlando, on Wednesday, Nov. 27 (ESPN). This game is a matchup of two emerging teams, each with a take-charge guard who are fun to watch — Florida’s Walter Clayton, Jr. and Wake Forest’s Hunter Sallis.
Arkansas vs. Illinois in Kansas City, Mo. on Thursday, Nov. 27 (CBS). We can say with certainty this won’t be a 50-48, grind-it-out affair. Both teams are loaded with athletes who can score.
