Hamad Mousa decided to continue his college basketball career at Cal Poly instead of leaving for more NIL money in the transfer portal. His head coach subsequently hid the planned return from other schools to secure a bigger paycheck in a buy game.
It was a brilliant strategy.
High-major college basketball programs were more willing to play the Mustangs, and to pay more money to play them, because they did not think Mousa was going to to run it back. Got ’em!
Hamad Mousa turned down a lot of NIL money in the transfer portal.
As a former unranked recruit, Hamad Mousa committed to the University of Dayton in 2024. The son of former Qatari basketball star Yaseen Musa previously attended the NBA Global Academy in Canberra, Australia, played for the Qatar men’s national team in the Asia Cup and played professionally for Al-Rayyan in the Qatari Basketball League.
However, the 6-foot-8, 200-pound forward did not see much action for the Flyers during his freshman season of college basketball and averaged only 1.3 points per game. The lack of playing time led him to enter the transfer portal.
Mousa landed at Cal Poly. It was a breakout sophomore season. He averaged 20.4 points on 44.3% shooting, 6.3 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.0 steals in 31.3 minutes per game as the team’s leading scorer and rebounder. He also led the Big West in scoring.
Mousa decided to re-enter the transfer portal after his sophomore season. According to CJ Moore of The Athletic, bidding started around $1.5 million for one year. In the end, he decided to return to Cal Poly for way less money.
Head coach Mike DeGeorge said his entire budget, for the entire roster, hovers around $500,000. Mousa will be the highest-paid player on the team but that is one third of what he was being offered as an individual in the transfer portal.
Cal Poly hid his return from other college basketball programs.
DeGeorge knew that Hamad Mousa was going to run it back with the Mustangs before anybody else. He decided to keep the news a secret and asked his star scorer to do the same.
Cal Poly raises money to pay its players by scheduling “buy games.” High-major programs like USC, UCLA and Utah pay the mid-major programs to play them in the nonconference portion of the season. The high-major programs typically schedule a mid-major team they know they can beat. They essentially pay them to lose.
However, the Mustangs actually beat a high-major program in each of DeGeorge’s first two seasons. Cal Poly defeated Stanford at Stanford in 2024 and Utah at Utah in 2025.
It was already hard enough for DeGeorge to find buy games for 2026 after back-to-back upset wins. It would be even harder if the high-major opponents knew they would have to play against Mousa.
Therefore, DeGeorge decided to keep his return a secret. He wanted other schools to think his team would not be very good so he could not only secure the game, but the largest paycheck for the game. That money then goes right back into the roster.
Sneaky? Sure. But it worked!