Ole Miss is making just its 10th-ever NCAA Tournament appearance and its first since 2019. Rebels head coach Chris Beard has taken four Division I programs to the NCAA Tournament, holds a 14-6 record in the Big Dance and took Texas Tech to the national championship game.

That type of experience – particularly for a program and group that doesn’t have a wealth of it – is invaluable in March.

The sixth-seeded Rebels (22-11) play 11th-seeded North Carolina (23-13) in the first round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament on Friday at 3:05 p.m. at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum. The game will be broadcast on TNT. It will be third meeting between the programs all-time and first since 1926. The teams split their prior two matchups as members of the Southern Conference. 

The Tar Heels are no strangers to March Madness as a program, having made 54 trips to the tournament with six national titles to their name. North Carolina rolled past San Diego State 95-68 in its First Four matchup Tuesday night.

While Ole Miss players like senior guards Sean Pedulla, Jaylen Murray and Davon Barnes each have NCAA Tournament experience at prior programs – with Virginia Tech, Saint Peter’s and Texas Southern, respectively – a handful of Rebels have never been. That list includes senior guards Matthew Murrell and Dre Davis, senior forward Jaemyn Brakefield and junior forward Malik Dia, who saw their team announced in an NCAA selection show for the first time ever on Sunday.

“It was really good. Really good,” freshman guard Eduardo Klafke said. “As coach Beard says, yesterday we got to smell the roses and enjoy ourselves. But today is a new day. What was yesterday was yesterday, and today we got the work in.”

There are a lot of little things that go into NCAA Tournament matchups that might not immediately come to mind, such as timeouts during games being longer due to the advertisements, mandatory media obligations by the NCAA and fewer opportunities to practice. But all those details matter, and the last thing Beard wants is for his team to be caught off guard. An experienced staff can help eliminate potential distractions.

“Ultimately, our jobs as coaches, if you put it down to one sentence in a dictionary, it’s do everything possible to help your guys be successful, whether that’s teaching, coaching, motivation, support, criticism, confidence building,” Beard said. “ … Just trying to share our knowledge and our experience with our players. Things as easy as logistics, how the practice times will work, how the kind of neutral crowds (are) going to feel in the first and second round, the limited practice time that we have in the game-day arena, the media responsibilities.

“ … Confidence and calmness come down to preparation. We try not to have any surprises this time of year, all the way down to hotel, to bus, to practice, to pregame. I think when you’re really prepared, it’s when you have a chance to be confident.”