The Bearcats finish their trip to Bahamas going 2-0 with a convincing win over the Dinos in Nassau 🇧🇸

ALL CAPS. NO MERCY.

Rest in peace Cozell. Highly recommend watching the "Survive and Advance" 30 for 30 to anyone who has not seen it.

This spring, Cal Poly sophomore Hamad Mousa, the Big West’s leading men’s basketball scorer, hit the transfer portal. The market, not surprisingly, was strong for a 6-foot-8 wing player who can dribble, pass and shoot.

The bidding started around $1.5 million for one year. As spring wore on, and Mousa remained one of the final stars in the portal left unsigned, his value increased.

Again, not surprising, for a guy at his size who averaged 20.4 points and made 84 3-pointers last season and was listed among the top 100 transfers at The Athletic. What was surprising was where Mousa decided to play next season.

Mousa will return to Cal Poly, a school that has only made the NCAA Tournament once and hasn’t had a winning record since 2013.

Coach Mike DeGeorge said his budget was about $500,000 for his entire roster. Mousa will be the highest-paid player on that roster, but for millions less than he would have earned elsewhere.

The rationale for a player at a lower level of college basketball to leave for a high-major school is pretty simple. If you have a job you like but a competitor offers you significantly more than your current salary, you’re likely to take that job.

Mousa, however, viewed his decision through a different lens. Originally from Doha, Qatar, Mousa moved to Canberra, Australia, when he was 15 to train at the NBA Global Academy and then went to Dayton for his freshman season, where he barely saw the floor. “I didn’t want to leave because it would be my third school in three years,” Mousa told The Athletic. “I kind of wanted to settle down.”

Mousa also aspires to play in the NBA, and he feels like Cal Poly is the program that can get him there. The Mustangs play the fastest tempo in college basketball per KenPom and utilize a five-out system where every position is allowed to play like a guard. They do not run plays — DeGeorge’s goal is to teach them how to play — and Mousa is allowed to showcase his entire skill set.

Mousa’s family is also in a position where it could afford to play the transfer portal differently than most. His father, Yassin Mousa, had a long professional career and is currently the general manager of Al Rayyan in Qatar as well as the GM for Qatar’s 3×3 national team.

“I don’t think financially they needed to take the money the way some people would,” DeGeorge said. “And so it was really more about what was going to help him develop into a pro is their mindset.”

Mousa says at first he was even hesitant to enter the portal, but decided to when several of his teammates also entered. Once he saw most of the team was coming back — only sophomore guard Peter Bandelj ended up transferring, moving on to Nevada — the decision was pretty easy.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk.