NCAA puts Ole Miss on two years of probation over a former basketball assistant's tampering

The NCAA put Ole Miss on two years of probation and fined it $455,000 on Friday after finding that former men's basketball assistant Wes Flanigan tampered with a player at another school.

According to the Division I Committee on Infractions, Flanigan talked on the phone 16 times and traded 10 text messages with the adviser of an athlete who had not entered the transfer portal. The player later entered the portal but never visited Ole Miss, never got a scholarship offer and transferred somewhere else. The NCAA did not say when the contacts happened.

Coach Chris Beard was automatically responsible under the head-coach rule, but he received no penalty. The NCAA said he was not aware of the contact and promoted compliance.

Flanigan got a one-year show-cause order and a two-game suspension, which he served in December 2025, along with recruiting restrictions he served in the 2024-25 academic year. He spent three seasons at Ole Miss and is now associate head coach at Georgia Tech under first-year coach Scott Cross. His violations were classified Level II-mitigated.

The bigger charge against the school came from somewhere else. While looking into the athletic department, the NCAA found Ole Miss never actually disassociated a booster from its 2017 infractions case. The booster gave to the athletics foundation 18 times, for a total of $109,240, and got premium seating at games during the period he was supposed to be cut off. That led to a Level I-mitigated failure-to-monitor finding.

The penalties also include a one-week ban on men's basketball recruiting communications, a one-week ban on visits and a five-day cut in recruiting days, most of which Ole Miss already served over the past two seasons. The case was settled through negotiated resolution, so it cannot be appealed.