OXFORD \u2013 Ole Miss men\u2019s basketball coach Chris Beard said he had a tremendous amount of respect for senior guard Kezza Giffa before he ever really got to know him. Between his role as a father and his unique college journey, Giffa has the type of maturity Beard covets.<\/p>\n
Giffa, a 6-foot-1 guard originally from France, began his college career at UTEP, where he scored nine total points over 14 games. He spent the next season at Daytona State, a junior college in Florida, where he averaged just under 11 points per game. Giffa played the last two seasons at High Point and helped lead the Panthers to 56 combined wins and an NCAA Tournament appearance in 2024-25. He was named first-team All-Big South in both his seasons at High Point.<\/p>\n
Giffa entered the transfer portal in March and, after backing off his commitment to USC<\/a>, chose Ole Miss as the destination for his final college season. Giffa was rated as a four-star transfer, and the Rebels added six four-star transfers overall this offseason, per 247Sports\u2019 rankings<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI chose Ole Miss because I have some friends that played for coach Beard, and they told me great things about him,\u201d Giffa said. \u201c \u2026 He\u2019s a great coach, so this is why I wanted to play for Ole Miss.\u201d<\/p>\n Ole Miss is coming off its second-ever Sweet 16 appearance but will be without all but two players from that team. Senior forward Malik Dia returns, as does sophomore guard Eduardo Klafke. But gone are Sean Pedulla, Matthew Murrell, Jaylen Murray, Dre Davis and Jaemyn Brakefield \u2013 who averaged a combined 57.7 points per game last year \u2013 among others.<\/p>\n When Beard recruited Giffa out of the transfer portal, he not only saw a player with high-level experience at a winning program. He also saw a player with a path that somewhat resonated with his own.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst it was his maturity, his experience. (Giffa) is a father. He takes that role real seriously. It\u2019s the most important thing in his life, period. I have a lot of respect for that,\u201d Beard said. \u201cI\u2019ve got three daughters myself, so we shared that bond. \u2026 A certain maturity level is needed for that.<\/p>\n \u201c \u2026 So what does (Giffa) do when things don\u2019t quite work out at UTEP? He doesn\u2019t make excuses. he just goes to work, and he chose to go the junior college route to kind of bet on himself. \u2026 We understand the sacrifices you make to go to junior college. A lot of respect for those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n Giffa averaged 14.6 points per game on 44% shooting from the field last season. High Point\u2019s 81.7 points per game ranked 22nd nationally, and the Panthers\u2019 49.2 field-goal percentage was eighth in the country. They ranked ninth nationally in points per game (83.9) in Giffa\u2019s first season.<\/p>\n \u201cI like to play with a fast tempo and just learn how to make my teammates better,\u201d Giffa said. \u201cWe have a lot of great individual guys, and trying to help space the floor and find the guys down in the paint.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OXFORD \u2013 Ole Miss men\u2019s basketball coach Chris Beard said he had a tremendous amount of respect for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-33888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}