We are officially two months out from the start of the season. Everyone’s back on campus for the school year. The 90-degree weather is behind us — knock on wood. Before you know it, Mizzou Madness will be around the corner.
So far this offseason, I’ve written about the team’s returners, transfers and a few of the recruits that
Dennis Gates and his staff are hoping to bring on in the near future. But I haven’t written all that much about the incoming freshmen. So let’s talk about them.
Let’s get one thing straight from the start: This is an all-time class for the program. Last year, shortly after
Trent Burns committed,
I looked at how the Tigers’ 2024 cycle compared to all of the others in the
Rivals.com era. This year’s group ranked fifth out of 23 with an average player ranking of 76.8 and second with 19 total stars acquired. It finished sixth in
Rivals’ class rankings, beating out the likes of North Carolina, UConn and Kansas. I did point out in the article that a highly-rated cycle doesn’t always guarantee on-court success, and that’s especially true in the transfer portal era. But in terms of pure recruiting jobs, this one’s up there.
This group stands out in another way, too. Here’s a snippet of what I wrote: “It’s also clear that this will be the Tigers’ tallest class of all time with two 7-footers committed — if you were to have every player from every class stand on each other’s shoulders, the 2024 class would tower over the others.”
I had the class ranked fourth in average height at 80.2 inches. At the time, I was basing the players’ heights off of their club team’s rosters. Missouri released its official roster last week, though, and the players’ average height is now 81.2 inches, which would’ve ranked second, the exception being the 2020 class which consisted of just 7-foot-3
Jordan Wilmore.
Here are the updated heights and weights for all five players:
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Marcus Allen is at 6-7, 220 (up 10 pounds)
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T.O. Barrett is at 6-4, 200 (down an inch and up 20 pounds)
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Annor Boateng is at 6-6, 215 (up an inch and 10 pounds)
-Trent Burns is at 7-5, 235 (up two inches and 15 pounds)
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Peyton Marshall is at 7-0, 300 (no change)
The 2023 class had height, with 7-foot
Jordan Butler, 6-foot-10
Trent Pierce and 6-foot-2
Anthony Robinson II. The issue, though, was that all three were fairly slim. Butler was listed at 230 pounds, Pierce was at 210 and Robinson at 175. The 2024 class has size. Most of these guys have the builds to play right now and not get pushed around.
Olive Oyl could truthfully be singing about any of them.
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I’ve got thoughts on all five guys, but I’ll be upfront and tell you that my opinions are based on very limited observations. I’ve only seen Boateng, Burns and Marshall in person one time each. I’ve probably seen more of 2025 commit
Aaron Rowe than I have of those three combined. I can go off of clips and stats and what other people have told me, but as far as personal eye test, I’m working with a pretty small sample size. So let’s call these educated hunches. Here we go:
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Missouri hasn’t really shied away from putting “Boat” in the spotlight. When he came to town for an unofficial visit on Nov. 19, the team had him stand at center court, put him on the jumbotron and
introduced him to Mizzou Arena. When the season ended and the Tigers wanted to give fans a reason to be excited again, they had him
narrate a promo video. When Boateng went to play in the Nike Hoops Summit in April, Gates held a virtual press conference over Zoom and included him in it.
Boateng’s a man of many talents. He played saxophone in his high school band — Gates said he wants Boateng to play the national anthem before one of their games this year. He worked as an IT intern for the City of Little Rock. When the team tweeted out photos of its players on the first day of school, Boateng wrote that when he grows up, he wants to be a “
computer scientist/NBA/data scientist.” He was named an Academic All-American by the National High School Coaches Association with a 3.7 GPA. There’s a lot to like about him that has absolutely nothing to do with basketball.
On the court, though, he’s a beast. He led Little Rock Central High School to a state title as a senior and was named the Arkansas Gatorade Player of the Year averaging 18.4 points, 7.9 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.4 steals. He’s
incredibly athletic and very physical. I didn’t get to see him when I watched the team practice in July but from what I know, he’s very difficult to stop if he gets going downhill. His size is going to allow him to be versatile defensively. The biggest hole in his game right now is his jumpshot, but his form looks decent and he’s a good free throw shooter, so I think there’s hope he can get better from long range.
In the short term, there are a ton of upperclassmen on the wing who will compete with Boateng for minutes, but I think the rookie’s going to be too good to keep off the floor. He might not get starter minutes but Gates will find a way to get him into the rotation. Long term, however, I think he could be the face of the program in a year or two.
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It’s kind of nice when you can swap out one 7-foot-5 guy for another, no? To me, Burns has some shades of
Mo Bamba during his freshman year at Texas. He’s Wemby-sized, listed at 7-foot-5. He’s mobile for his size, not as athletic as Bamba was but also not as cement-footed as
Connor Vanover. He’s going to get his hands on a lot of shots without trying — he was voted the SWAIC Defensive Player of the Year as a senior at Good Vision Academy. He’s got a prettier jumpshot than Bamba, who made just 27.5% of his 3s with the Longhorns.
Bamba put up 12.5 points, 10.5 rebounds and 3.7 blocks per game in college. Burns is probably more than a few years away from putting up those kinds of numbers. His game is pretty raw, but that’s normal for big guys this young. He mentions in the video that they’re working on his inside game and that’s pretty much exclusively all I saw him do when I watched the team practice.
If the decision were up to me, I’d probably redshirt Burns this year. That’s purely my opinion, I haven’t heard anyone tell me they’re leaning one way or another. In fact, when Burns committed, I was actually told that’s a decision that wouldn’t be made until right before the season starts. But I just think about the growing pains Jordan Butler had to go through. You could tell there was potential there but he just routinely got outmuscled by the SEC’s bigs. Burns is listed at just five pounds heavier than Butler was coming in.
Redshirting Burns would mean you’re relying pretty heavily on some undersized guys like
Mark Mitchell,
Aidan Shaw and
Trent Pierce to fill in behind
Josh Gray and Peyton Marshall at center. But I think it’s a smarter play to preserve Burns’ eligibility rather than rolling the dice and finding out if he’s ready or not. South Carolina has Butler listed at 240 pounds heading into his sophomore year. That version of him might’ve made a bigger impact last season, but the Tigers didn’t have the luxury of sitting him down for a year. They could this season with Burns.
If he does end up playing, I don’t think it’ll be much more than spot minutes unless one of the other centers runs into foul trouble.
