The messy optics for an Ole Miss coach this week wasn’t reserved only for the football coach, but for the head basketball coach whose viral moment is also making headlines days later. Coach Chris Beard was none-to-happy with his senior point guard, AJ Storr, after a loss to the Miami Hurricanes Tuesday night. It showed. For anyone with eyes on this press-conference, you could see the tension with the bad body language in plain sight. But is Chris Beard really the coach who the college basketball universe wants to grant carte-blanch holier than thou status to?
AN EDITORIAL BY MATTY D.
Pissed Chris Beard Ole Miss Presser Goes Viral
It’s now roughly 48 hours after the post game press conference, but this moment has obviously struck a nerve with college basketball fans. Beard, a coach who lost his job at Texas after being accused of domestic violence, accused his players of lacking effort. Storr, a senior transfer who is playing for his fourth school (after St. John’s, Kansas, and Wisconsin), was asked in the post-game press conference if anything can be done when the team lacks effort. His response was that, “no, you can’t really do too much (about it).”
That’s when coach Chris Beard interrupted and said, “Yeah we can play different players.”
Ole Miss beat reporter Sam Hutchens had a front row seat for the awkward exchange.
Storr played 16 minutes in the first half and just 8 minutes in the second half. He went 2 for 9 from the field, including two missed layups to start the game.
One day later, a Reddit thread about that moment generated more than 130 comments. Most people blame the player who has been bouncing to a new school (literally) every season.
That video posted by beat writer Hutchens was viewed more than 23,000 times on Twitter in two days.
AJ Storr shows accountability and credits teammates seconds before viral moment
After opening remarks from Chris Beard, Storr takes accountability in saying that the team needs to do better collectively and that the guards (himself included) should have done a better job getting the ball into the post on offense. He also credited the good play of bench players who compensated for a lack of effort. Storr said that the second group came in off the bench, gave a spark, and some energy.
For his part, Chris Beard clearly targeted AJ Storr with his post-game comments. He called out “starters” who had a plus/minus of “minus 21.” That was Storr’s plus/minus stat for the game.
Coaches have long used the media as a megaphone to deliver messages to their locker rooms, but Beard’s approach revives the debate about how effective — or even how wise — that tactic really is. Calling out a player’s brutal plus/minus without using his name, and without addressing him directly at the podium, lands in that murky space between motivational strategy and passive-aggressive PR. Some will argue that it’s a calculated move meant to spark urgency and accountability. Others will question whether it unnecessarily exposes a young player while sidestepping a more straightforward, in-house conversation. Either way, moments like this always force a bigger discussion: where is the line between coaching through the media and simply sending the wrong message altogether?
We have clearly met a new moment for what accountability looks like and feels like in the NIL era of player movement. AJ Storr is making a reported $1.5M this year to play basketball at Ole Miss.
One thing is true, bench player Zach Day‘s stock certainly went up this week.
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