NASHVILLE — Chris Beard said the timing of a contract extension announcement wasn't orchestrated to give the Rebels an injection of positivity after a difficult close to the regular season.

Rather, the first-year Ole Miss basketball coach said Wednesday, only hours after the new deal was announced, it was simply the product of ongoing discussions with Athletic Director Keith Carter and Chancellor Glenn Boyce. A source told the Clarion Ledger that the deal will come with updated financial terms. It is not an instance of Beard's state contract simply rolling over to circumvent the four-year cap the state of Mississippi imposes on contracts for its employees.

"We believe in what we can accomplish in Oxford," Beard told reporters. "Lot of objectives this first season. Ultimately, the scoreboard is really, really important. We understand that. But I think when you think about attendance, growth in attention in the program, all the work that the Grove Collective has done and all the donors, there's just a lot of good things going on at Ole Miss right now. We're excited to be a part of it. We're just getting started."

The Rebels (20-11) head into their SEC tournament matchup with Texas A&M (18-13) on Thursday (6 p.m., SEC Network) having lost eight of their last 10 games. Any path to the NCAA Tournament would now likely require Ole Miss to win the SEC Tournament.

The Rebels' open practice period Wednesday at Bridgestone Arena brought the intensity. Where other teams opted for light shootarounds, the Rebels competed for just about the entire 40 minutes, playing four-on-four games before following with one-on-one contests.

Beard, at one point, told the competing teams that their score would be set back to zero if they gave up an offensive rebound or missed a defensive block-out assignment. Ole Miss is the fifth-worst defensive rebounding team in college basketball. It was outrebounded 50-21 in a lopsided loss to Texas A&M last Saturday.

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Beard, whose interactions with reporters have tended to be more reflective than usual recently, was zeroed in on the immediate task at hand Wednesday ‒ much more typical for him.

"We came to Oxford to do a job and we're just getting started," Beard said. "Great times ahead. Certainly there will be a time later on to kind of reflect on Year One and all that. We're 100% focused right now on our opportunity to play in the SEC Tournament tomorrow against Texas A&M."

David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.

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This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Chris Beard contract: What Ole Miss basketball coach said of extension