Roman Siulepa: Why Ole Miss was a perfect fit

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Powerhouse Australian athlete Roman Siulepa was a coveted recruit in college basketball last year, but he may have even been more highly-touted going into the NCAA transfer portal.

The 19-year-old, who chose to pursue basketball over a potential career in rugby union, decided to move on after his freshman season at the University of Pittsburgh where he averaged 10 points and 5.5 rebounds and had several standout games, including 19 points against projected NBA lottery pick in Cameron Boozer and Duke University.

Entering the portal resulted in Siulepa ending up at the Ole Miss Rebels under coach Chris Beard and the former NBA Global Academy scholarship holder opened up about the detail the Southeastern Conference school went to in order to make it feel like the perfect fit.

"Just talking to my circle, obviously my agent, Jase (Cadee), and we all sort of made a decision together to, I guess, move on and and find somewhere else," Siulepa said on the latest episode of Cut to the Jase with Jason Cadee.

"Pitt was obviously a good first year for me, my freshman year, and I enjoyed it a lot, there's some good people there, but I think more just a development thing. Sort of how the team would would sort of work out and and what I can add to a different place. So, it should be good.

"Obviously like money pays a big part into it with how NIL is going right now if we want to be honest, but I think just the coach, talking to the Coach Beard, what what their plans are for me, sort of how they really broke down film from how I played at Pitt and and showed me how they could use it in Ole Miss.

"I think that was a pretty cool thing they did and just you know their constant effort, like they pretty consistent on just trying to get me constantly talking to my agent and stuff. So that goes a long way."

With thousands of athletes entering the transfer portal, Siulepa spoke about the uncertainty the process brings.

"You're definitely like a little bit unsure," he said on the basketball.com.au podcast.

"You don't know where you're going, it's literally called a portal, so it's pretty different.

"But as a player, I think it was just more wanting to land somewhere, obviously staying in communication with (Jason Cadee) and (my agent), but you know, at the end of it, when everything sort of sorts itself out, you sort of start to grin and get happy about it.

"So, I guess the process was definitely different but it was pretty cool to see it unfold."

Cadee also shared a funny moment with Coach Beard from Ole Miss while in Indiana for the NCAA Final Four.

"When I got to go over and visit a bit of the Final Four stuff in Indy, obviously there's coaches left, right, and centre walking around. There's people from all different schools, it's genuinely like you're at a football game, but with 300 different schools there," Cadee said.

"But I got to speak to the coach and and the assistants and everything, and it was actually wasn't by design we just ran into him at a bar as we were going to get lunch and Coach Beard introduced himself and we spoke speaking about Roman.

"He said to me he goes 'listen I don't know if I should say this I don't know this is an insult or anything but man I've always wanted to coach a rugby player'.

"So we kind of had a laugh but it was like it showed they were really excited and this was before Roman had signed, so Roman wasn't locked in at this point they were still recruiting him, so it was just it showed how much they knew about him, the research they'd done and it was definitely a bit of a laugh when he said that to me."