Mousa will return to Cal Poly, a school that has only made the NCAA Tournament once and hasn\u2019t had a winning record since 2013.<\/p>\n
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 much less than he would have earned elsewhere.<\/p>\n
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\u2019re likely to take that job.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to leave because it would be my third school in three years,\u201d Mousa told The Athletic. \u201cI kind of wanted to settle down.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 DeGeorge\u2019s goal is to teach them how to play \u2014 and Mousa is allowed to showcase his entire skill set.<\/p>\n
Mousa\u2019s 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\u2019s 3\u00d73 national team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think financially they needed to take the money the way some people would,\u201d DeGeorge said. \u201cAnd so it was really more about what was going to help him develop into a pro is their mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 only sophomore guard Peter Bandelj ended up transferring, moving on to Nevada \u2014 the decision was pretty easy.<\/p>\n
![\"Coach](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-03-07-CPMBB-vs-CSUB-Edited-00384-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Cal Poly\u2019s style of play helped convince Mousa to come back for another season. Courtesy of Cal Poly Athletics<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the boys coming back gave me more motivation to come back and actually compete for a \u2019chip and hopefully win,\u201d Mousa said. \u201cCoach and people here are really great people. They really want to get you better. They really wanna make you a better person overall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once Mousa told DeGeorge he\u2019d decided to return in late May, the coach had one request: He didn\u2019t want Mousa to announce it yet. The way Cal Poly raises money to pay its players is through scheduling \u201cbuy games,\u201d where a high-major school essentially pays a low-major school like Cal Poly to play them and fill out their schedule. The hope for high-majors is to rack up wins against low-major schools. But when a low-major school is a threat to actually win the game, high-major schools are sometimes hesitant to play those opponents. In DeGeorge\u2019s first two seasons, the Mustangs have beaten a Power 4 school, edging Stanford in 2024 and Utah in 2025.<\/p>\n
So, to get the games to fund the best possible roster, DeGeorge wanted it to appear that Cal Poly\u2019s team might not be as good, which meant allowing other schools to believe Mousa wasn\u2019t returning. That wasn\u2019t that hard considering the market for Mousa\u2019s services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way the timeline worked out,\u201d DeGeorge said, \u201cis not ideal for your stress level.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hardest jobs in college basketball coaching are at the low- and mid-major levels. It\u2019s almost inevitable that when they find and develop a good player, he\u2019s eventually going to leave. And while they have him, they\u2019re in constant fear of him leaving.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very challenging because you get to the end of the season and you immediately go into this period of unknown,\u201d DeGeorge said. \u201cIt\u2019s the thing I like least about my job if I\u2019m being honest. It\u2019s just this uncertainty and not necessarily having a great way to solve the problem. Problems are our job, and you gotta figure out how to solve problems, but these weren\u2019t problems we could solve.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeGeorge was fortunate to have only three players enter the portal this spring, and while he learned the fates of the first two fairly quickly \u2014 one stayed and one left \u2014 the wait for Mousa kept dragging, with the offers continually increasing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery week we just felt like, \u2018Oh, next week we\u2019ll know more, next we\u2019ll know more,\u2019\u201d DeGeorge said. \u201cAnd it went on for months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once Mousa decided to stay with the Mustangs, it meant 13 of their 14 scholarship players would be back for the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n
In explaining his decision, Mousa repeated some form of competing for a conference championship three times. That\u2019s his goal next season and a big reason he\u2019s back, which is not that unusual for a college basketball player to say, but it is at Cal Poly. The school last won a regular-season conference title in 1996, and that was in a league with four teams. In the six years before DeGeorge arrived, the Mustangs averaged 1.7 wins per season in conference play.<\/p>\n
With that context, what DeGeorge has accomplished in his first two seasons \u2014 an 18-22 record in Big West play \u2014 inspires hope, especially considering he had the least experienced roster in the conference both years, per KenPom.com\u2019s tracking.<\/p>\n
That will not be the case in 2026-27. Cal Poly is the only team in the league returning at least four starters, and Mousa is the only player on an All-Big West team with remaining eligibility to return. (The other three All-Big West players transferred to high-major programs.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI do believe in this group,\u201d DeGeorge said. \u201cI think we\u2019ve got a chance to have a breakthrough year.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-01-10-CPMBB-vs-UCD-Edited-30-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n The Mustangs returned 13 of their 14 scholarship players for this upcoming season. Courtesy of Cal Poly Athletics<\/p>\n
If success really does follow, Cal Poly\u2019s roster might eventually get raided by bigger schools. DeGeorge tries to combat that by running a fast-paced, fun offense that allows everyone to be a playmaker, and by building \u201ctrust and relationships\u201d with his players.<\/p>\n
In early February during conference play, he called a meeting to tell his players he wanted them all back and wasn\u2019t going to \u201cpick and choose\u201d who he would try to retain. \u201cI think it kind of put everybody at ease that it wasn\u2019t going to be this painful process for them to go through,\u201d DeGeorge said.<\/p>\n
The Mustangs got hot soon after, winning five of their final seven conference games after a 5-8 start in the Big West.<\/p>\n
When the season ended, DeGeorge continued to be transparent with his process. He followed an NBA-like model by assigning value based on a combination of production, role in his system and what the market value would be to replace each particular player. For instance, a skilled small-ball center who can guard all five positions is extremely valuable in his system because the Mustangs want every player on the floor to be able to dribble, pass and shoot.<\/p>\n
DeGeorge couldn\u2019t afford to retain his entire roster, so he determined the number of players he could pay, divided the amounts based on his production\/role\/market value formula and then shared his offer with each player\u2019s agent. Each time, DeGeorge said, the agents came back and said they thought their player had more market value than what DeGeorge was offering.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019re right,\u201d DeGeorge said he told each agent. \u201cI\u2019m sure that\u2019s true, but this is the money we have. Kind of take it or leave it.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeGeorge says he adjusted for one player but held his ground on everyone else, and they all returned. At Cal Poly, he\u2019s only had one player transfer. Since moving from Division III to Division II in 2018 \u2014 DeGeorge coached for six seasons at Colorado Mesa \u2014 he\u2019s had only two transfers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s refreshing,\u201d DeGeorge said. \u201cPeople are so critical of young people for what\u2019s happening with the transfer portal. They always present as if these players are selfish, and first of all, they\u2019re not being selfish. The market is what it is, and if they have market value, they have a right to explore that. They aren\u2019t creating these rules. \u2026 They\u2019re being capitalists, and that\u2019s who we are as a country.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Mousa talks about his return, he focuses on what Cal Poly has done for him and how much he loves it there. \u201cI don\u2019t want to leave this place because it feels like home, man,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m happy. I\u2019m really happy to come back and play with the boys again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mousa is also well aware of the success stories at mid-majors in California. He mentions Jalen Williams at Santa Clara and Ajay Mitchell at UC Santa Barbara, who both won an NBA championship in 2025 with the Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s possible,\u201d Mousa said. \u201cYou just gotta go out there and try to win games and be me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This spring, Cal Poly sophomore Hamad Mousa, the Big West\u2019s leading men\u2019s basketball scorer, hit the transfer portal.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,15587,217,354,231,772,1544,10],"class_list":["post-805490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-cal-poly-mustangs","tag-college-basketball","tag-mens-college-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaab","tag-sports-business"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117051265163165879","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}