There hasn’t been much news on the transfer portal front for Missouri. Jesus Carralero Martin made his exit official but we knew that was happening weeks ago. So, we continue to wait — not just to see who else the Tigers show interest in but also to see who else moves on.
A glance at the roster math again: Mizzou graduated four seniors and saw another two players enter the portal. They’ve got five freshmen plus Tennessee Martin transfer Jacob Crews set to come in. That’s an even swap, six for six. If the team is supposed to add another three to four more newcomers like we’re expecting, that means another three to four guys have to come off scholarship, either by departing through the portal or by accepting an NIL-only deal.
I’m not going to speculate on who’s most likely to leave. But somebody (and realistically, multiple somebodies) will be leaving. And so, we wait.
In the meantime, let’s talk about other things happening in college basketball.
Missouri hired an assistant coach.
I don’t know too much about Rob Summers other than what I wrote on Tuesday to be completely honest. He’s from Columbus, Ohio, like my dad, and that’s enough for me to say I like the hire.
Part of me is sad because of what it means for Dickey Nutt. Mizzou was the first high-major school that gave him the title of assistant coach since he was with Oklahoma State in the 1980s. He’d worked a long time to get back to that spot. And he didn’t do anything wrong to lose that role. His health just got in the way. Part of me understands the need for him to take a back seat. I just hate that it’s a need in the first place.
That being said, I think Summers is a logical addition to the staff. He’s worked with Dennis Gates before, knows the system he likes to run, had success with him at Cleveland State. And like Gates said in the press release announcing the news, he specializes in post development.
Summers himself is 7-foot and played for Penn State and West Virginia. He knows what it means to be a big man at a big school. That seems especially relevant for the likes of potential returners Aidan Shaw, Jordan Butler and Trent Pierce, incoming freshmen Trent Burns and Peyton Marshall and any other frontcourt transfers the Tigers bring in. (Side note, I texted my dad that side-by-side photo of Marshall on Wednesday. His response: “Could be a whole new ballgame if he can play and stay out of foul trouble.”)
There’s a good chance I’m reading too much into it, but I also think it’s notable that Summers was the one tapped to fill Nutt’s spot on the bench. I don’t think anyone would’ve blamed Gates for going off the board and bringing in an “outside” hire after the way this season went just to shake things up a little. Instead, he brought in the top assistant from his previous staff. I think it shows that Gates is digging his heels in. Win or lose, he’s not going to change much.
The men’s NCAA tournament has been fun!
Please don’t ask me about my bracket, I don’t want to talk about my bracket, it hasn’t been a good year for my bracket, ESPN literally put an ice cube on my bracket so let’s not talk about it.
I don’t know why I didn’t put more stock into NC State. Like, all the signs were there. When a team is playing that hot this time of year, it’s worth giving extra consideration for a deep run (see: St. Peter’s in 2022). When a high-major team is playing that hot this time of year, you oughta know they’re not cooling off any time soon. When NC State — the “Survive and Advance” Jimmy Valvano Wolfpack — gets hot this time of year, we should all have penciled them in for the third weekend of the Big Dance. OF COURSE they’re a Final Four team.
I do want to give my two cents about Mo Diarra. I know Mizzou fans are pining for him now that he’s balling out for an unbelievably fun team. I know fans are upset the Tigers didn’t/couldn’t keep him. But this version of Diarra is objectively different from the player that suited up for the black and gold last year. Diarra is currently No. 3 in the country in defensive rebounding rate — he didn’t crack the top 100 last season. He’s got one of the lowest turnover rates in the nation at NC State — he had the second-highest on the team at Missouri. Sometimes it just takes a change in scenery for guys to really reach their potential, like it did for Tamar Bates. Diarra has the benefit of playing next to D.J. Burns Jr. with the Wolfpack but would’ve stayed almost exclusively at center for the Tigers. You have to consider how that would have affected his production. I don’t think it’s anything to get too up in arms about. MU probably should have put in more effort to keep Diarra, but hindsight is always 20/20.
As I said in my last column, once my bracket goes up in flames, I usually just root for complete anarchy. And NC State winning the whole thing would be just that. However, I think I lean toward UConn becoming back-to-back national champs. We all saw up close how good that Illinois team was in the Braggin’ Rights game. And for the Huskies to just squeeze the life out of the Illini the way they did makes me think it’s going to be impossible for anyone to get the better of them. Whether it's Mark Sears, Zach Edey or Burns, I think UConn’s going to have answers for whoever it’s up against.
The women’s NCAA tournament has been just as fun!
We’ve talked about it on the message board a bit, but I think the difference between the men’s and the women’s side is that the women have actual stars headlining the event. Their best players have, for the most part, stayed in one place for three or four years despite the temptations of the transfer portal. To be fair to the men, part of that is forced by the WNBA, which doesn’t allow the players to declare for the draft until after their fourth year. I’m sure there are plenty of underclassmen who’d go pro if they could.
I feel like watching Caitlan Clark has to resemble something similar to what it was like watching Kareem Abdul-Jabaar in college. It’s somebody we just have never seen in women’s basketball before. Back when I covered Texas State, the Bobcats had a player named Toshua Leavitt, who led the NCAA in 3-point percentage in the 2017-18 season, shooting 42.7% from beyond the arc. Leavitt made 137 triples that year — Clark’s made 56 more and still has a game or two left to go. She could legitimately get to 200. Stephen Curry didn’t even do that until his fourth season with the Golden State Warriors. I legitimately want the San Antonio Spurs to draft her as their starting point guard.
But even beyond Clark, there’s Angel Reese (who 100% does not deserve the hate she gets), there’s Paige Bueckers, there’s Kamilla Cardoso, there’s Aziaha James. Each of them is the leading scorer of a Final Four team for a school they’ve been at for at least three years. And that’s not even including players like JuJu Watkins, who’s only a freshman, or Rori Harmon, who could’ve helped Texas make an even deeper run if she’d been healthy this postseason.
And again, it’s not the NCAA’s fault that the men haven’t been able to produce as many big names. The NBA simply wants to develop guys from an earlier age and I don’t think the executives in that league particularly care whether or not men’s college basketball has star power — they’ll develop their own stars without the NCAA’s help. As long as that’s the case, I think it benefits the women’s side of the sport.
It’s a shame the selection committee put Iowa and LSU in the same region. That matchup deserved to have Final Four billing. The game was playing while I was driving back from Texas to Missouri, so I did something that I very rarely do: I listened to the radio call. South Carolina/NC State and Iowa/UConn are still going to be great games, though, and I’m excited to see how they shake out.
A glance at the roster math again: Mizzou graduated four seniors and saw another two players enter the portal. They’ve got five freshmen plus Tennessee Martin transfer Jacob Crews set to come in. That’s an even swap, six for six. If the team is supposed to add another three to four more newcomers like we’re expecting, that means another three to four guys have to come off scholarship, either by departing through the portal or by accepting an NIL-only deal.
I’m not going to speculate on who’s most likely to leave. But somebody (and realistically, multiple somebodies) will be leaving. And so, we wait.
In the meantime, let’s talk about other things happening in college basketball.
Missouri hired an assistant coach.
I don’t know too much about Rob Summers other than what I wrote on Tuesday to be completely honest. He’s from Columbus, Ohio, like my dad, and that’s enough for me to say I like the hire.
Part of me is sad because of what it means for Dickey Nutt. Mizzou was the first high-major school that gave him the title of assistant coach since he was with Oklahoma State in the 1980s. He’d worked a long time to get back to that spot. And he didn’t do anything wrong to lose that role. His health just got in the way. Part of me understands the need for him to take a back seat. I just hate that it’s a need in the first place.
That being said, I think Summers is a logical addition to the staff. He’s worked with Dennis Gates before, knows the system he likes to run, had success with him at Cleveland State. And like Gates said in the press release announcing the news, he specializes in post development.
Summers himself is 7-foot and played for Penn State and West Virginia. He knows what it means to be a big man at a big school. That seems especially relevant for the likes of potential returners Aidan Shaw, Jordan Butler and Trent Pierce, incoming freshmen Trent Burns and Peyton Marshall and any other frontcourt transfers the Tigers bring in. (Side note, I texted my dad that side-by-side photo of Marshall on Wednesday. His response: “Could be a whole new ballgame if he can play and stay out of foul trouble.”)
There’s a good chance I’m reading too much into it, but I also think it’s notable that Summers was the one tapped to fill Nutt’s spot on the bench. I don’t think anyone would’ve blamed Gates for going off the board and bringing in an “outside” hire after the way this season went just to shake things up a little. Instead, he brought in the top assistant from his previous staff. I think it shows that Gates is digging his heels in. Win or lose, he’s not going to change much.
The men’s NCAA tournament has been fun!
Please don’t ask me about my bracket, I don’t want to talk about my bracket, it hasn’t been a good year for my bracket, ESPN literally put an ice cube on my bracket so let’s not talk about it.
I don’t know why I didn’t put more stock into NC State. Like, all the signs were there. When a team is playing that hot this time of year, it’s worth giving extra consideration for a deep run (see: St. Peter’s in 2022). When a high-major team is playing that hot this time of year, you oughta know they’re not cooling off any time soon. When NC State — the “Survive and Advance” Jimmy Valvano Wolfpack — gets hot this time of year, we should all have penciled them in for the third weekend of the Big Dance. OF COURSE they’re a Final Four team.
I do want to give my two cents about Mo Diarra. I know Mizzou fans are pining for him now that he’s balling out for an unbelievably fun team. I know fans are upset the Tigers didn’t/couldn’t keep him. But this version of Diarra is objectively different from the player that suited up for the black and gold last year. Diarra is currently No. 3 in the country in defensive rebounding rate — he didn’t crack the top 100 last season. He’s got one of the lowest turnover rates in the nation at NC State — he had the second-highest on the team at Missouri. Sometimes it just takes a change in scenery for guys to really reach their potential, like it did for Tamar Bates. Diarra has the benefit of playing next to D.J. Burns Jr. with the Wolfpack but would’ve stayed almost exclusively at center for the Tigers. You have to consider how that would have affected his production. I don’t think it’s anything to get too up in arms about. MU probably should have put in more effort to keep Diarra, but hindsight is always 20/20.
As I said in my last column, once my bracket goes up in flames, I usually just root for complete anarchy. And NC State winning the whole thing would be just that. However, I think I lean toward UConn becoming back-to-back national champs. We all saw up close how good that Illinois team was in the Braggin’ Rights game. And for the Huskies to just squeeze the life out of the Illini the way they did makes me think it’s going to be impossible for anyone to get the better of them. Whether it's Mark Sears, Zach Edey or Burns, I think UConn’s going to have answers for whoever it’s up against.
The women’s NCAA tournament has been just as fun!
We’ve talked about it on the message board a bit, but I think the difference between the men’s and the women’s side is that the women have actual stars headlining the event. Their best players have, for the most part, stayed in one place for three or four years despite the temptations of the transfer portal. To be fair to the men, part of that is forced by the WNBA, which doesn’t allow the players to declare for the draft until after their fourth year. I’m sure there are plenty of underclassmen who’d go pro if they could.
I feel like watching Caitlan Clark has to resemble something similar to what it was like watching Kareem Abdul-Jabaar in college. It’s somebody we just have never seen in women’s basketball before. Back when I covered Texas State, the Bobcats had a player named Toshua Leavitt, who led the NCAA in 3-point percentage in the 2017-18 season, shooting 42.7% from beyond the arc. Leavitt made 137 triples that year — Clark’s made 56 more and still has a game or two left to go. She could legitimately get to 200. Stephen Curry didn’t even do that until his fourth season with the Golden State Warriors. I legitimately want the San Antonio Spurs to draft her as their starting point guard.
But even beyond Clark, there’s Angel Reese (who 100% does not deserve the hate she gets), there’s Paige Bueckers, there’s Kamilla Cardoso, there’s Aziaha James. Each of them is the leading scorer of a Final Four team for a school they’ve been at for at least three years. And that’s not even including players like JuJu Watkins, who’s only a freshman, or Rori Harmon, who could’ve helped Texas make an even deeper run if she’d been healthy this postseason.
And again, it’s not the NCAA’s fault that the men haven’t been able to produce as many big names. The NBA simply wants to develop guys from an earlier age and I don’t think the executives in that league particularly care whether or not men’s college basketball has star power — they’ll develop their own stars without the NCAA’s help. As long as that’s the case, I think it benefits the women’s side of the sport.
It’s a shame the selection committee put Iowa and LSU in the same region. That matchup deserved to have Final Four billing. The game was playing while I was driving back from Texas to Missouri, so I did something that I very rarely do: I listened to the radio call. South Carolina/NC State and Iowa/UConn are still going to be great games, though, and I’m excited to see how they shake out.
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