Former walk-on Zach Day earned a scholarship last season and is one of just three returners back for another NCAA Tournament run with Ole Miss basketball.<\/p>\n
The others are Malik Dia and Eduardo Klafke. Both were in the rotation in 2024-25, but only Dia was a key piece<\/a><\/strong>. He started all 36 games and averaged 10.8 points and 5.7 rebounds per game.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dia shot 64 percent from the floor and 35 percent from 3-point range.<\/p>\n \u201cLast season, just excited to be here,\u201d Day said this week<\/a><\/strong>. \u201cMindset was just get better every day and see how good I could get. Really tried to soak in as much information as I possibly could and learn from the veteran team we had, all seniors, and just grow and experience that.\u201d<\/p>\n Day is entering Year 2 with the Rebels. He redshirted last season.<\/p>\n \u201cZach did a great job in our program,\u201d third-year Ole Miss head coach Chris Beard said<\/a><\/strong>. \u201cWorked hard every day in practice [and] developed into a player we believe can be an SEC contributor one day. That\u2019s a pretty good story \u2026 for a guy to turn down a lot of scholarship offers and decide to bet on himself and come to Ole Miss where we weren\u2019t promising anything. He deserves all the credit.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe transformed his body last year physically. He\u2019s got a chance to be a good shooter. I think there\u2019s a future for Zach at Ole Miss, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n RELATED: \u2018Electric player\u2019 Koren Johnson looks to be Ole Miss basketball\u2019s next Sean Pedulla<\/a><\/strong> Day said he learned a lot from departed Ole Miss guard Sean Pedulla.<\/p>\n Pedulla was a breakout star for the Rebels<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in his one and only season. He arrived as a former All-ACC guard from Virginia Tech. Pedulla had played in north of 100 games in three seasons and totaled over 1,200 points and 300 assists.\u00a0<\/p>\n He was instrumental in leading Ole Miss to 24 wins and the Sweet 16, matching the greatest single-season accomplishment in program history.\u00a0Pedulla topped Ole Miss in points (15.4)<\/strong><\/a>, minutes (32.8), 3-point percentage among starters (39.2 percent), free throw percentage (82.5), assists (135) and steals (68).<\/p>\n \u201cSean really was big for me,\u201d Day said. \u201cHe was like a big brother to me. We played one-on-one a few teams. I would work out with him and we just mutually grew a respect for each other. I really tried to lean on him, \u2018cause he really taught me a lot about the game of basketball and life in general.\u201d<\/p>\n Ole Miss fleshed out the roster<\/a><\/strong> in the off-season with seven transfers<\/a><\/strong>, three Top 100 high-school recruits and former Eurobasket MVP Ilias Kamardine.<\/p>\n Ole Miss signed a Top 20 portal class. Included were guards Kezza Giffa (High Point), Travis Perry (Kentucky) and Koren Johnson (Louisville), wing AJ Storr (Kansas) and forwards James Scott (Louisville), Corey Chest (LSU) and Augusto Cassia (Butler).<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re extremely athletic,\u201d Day said. \u201cI think we\u2019re just a different team than last year. Really versatile, athletic. Really fast. Not as much experience as last year, but I really think the athletic piece is a huge thing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been very exciting. Just new people, meeting different people from different colleges, especially from all the portal stuff. Just kind of seeing how other people did what they did last year and how they approach certain things and think about certain things.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former walk-on Zach Day earned a scholarship last season and is one of just three returners back for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1712,1713,1317,1337,1338,1714,1715,1716,1717,1718,1719,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-chris-beard","tag-malik-dia-22-ensworth","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-ole-miss","tag-ole-miss-basketball","tag-ole-miss-rebels","tag-ole-miss-rebels-basketball","tag-regwall","tag-sean-pedulla-21-memorial","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114719191370369283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
RELATED: New Faces, New Fight: Ole Miss basketball\u2019s SEC road revealed for 2025-26<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n