Cal men's basketball will play Ole Miss in San Antonio on December 16

The California Golden Bears continue to round out their non-conference schedule as they face an SEC foe in a neutral site.

Cal men’s basketball will play Ole Miss.

The California Golden Bears continue filling out their non-conference schedule with winnable games that could put them on track for a fast turnaround in 2022-23.

Cal scheduled another game for 2023 with Ole Miss this past week.

The California men's basketball team will face Ole Miss on Saturday, Dec. 16, at the AT&T Center in San Antonio as part of a 2023 Hall of Fame Series tripleheader. The neutral-site event will also feature Tennessee vs. North Carolina State and a women's matchup between Baylor and Miami.
 
It marks the first regular-season meeting between Cal and Ole Miss. The Golden Bears won the only previous matchup in the first round of the 2011 National Basketball Invitational in Berkeley.

Both Cal and Ole Miss are on similar trajectories. Both are coming off bottom-dweller appearances in their conference (The Rebels were 12-21, next-to-last in the SEC). Both teams have compiled top-20 transfer portal classes to try and rebuild on the fly.

Also both Cal and Ole Miss have first-year head coaches. But while Mark Madsen has a squeaky clean reputation, Chris Beard was fired from his job at Texas this past year after an incident of alleged battery against his fiancee. His fiancee eventually refuted the allegations after filing the initial report.

Beard was arrested on the morning of Dec. 12 after his fiancée, Randi Trew, told officers he choked her from behind, bit her and hit her when the two got in an argument. Trew released a statement on Dec. 23 in which she denied telling police Beard choked her.

"Chris did not strangle me, and I told that to law enforcement that evening," Trew said in her statement. "Chris has stated that he was acting in self-defense, and I do not refute that. I do not believe Chris was trying to intentionally harm me in any way."

Full police report available via Stewart Mandel. Ole Miss hired Beard anyway. Banner year of Cal facing SEC programs with questionable ethics.

Cal is also slated to play two of three of Bradley, UTEP and Tulane in the SoCal Challenge.