I understand you guys are frustrated. You're die hard fans and losses suck. But I just can't gather up any angst about this team. They played today without three of their four best players. They're a little undermanned to begin with. Without Jeremiah Tilmon and Mark Smith, there's not a team in this league they can beat (except maybe Georgia).
The backcourt holds promise for the future, both immediate and long term. The frontcourt is scary as hell. As I wrote in my post-game column, it's Jeremiah Tilmon and a whole lot of blind hope (which by this point in the season you can give up on).
Kevin Puryear is a senior. He's having a bad senior year. But I'm not going to pile on him. Evaluating this team is about the future, not about this season, and Puryear won't be here. Reed Nikko gives you everything he's got and gets the most out of his ability. Maybe there's something that will unlock a future for Mitchell Smith, but frankly, I've never seen it. The biggest concern for me is KJ Santos. This is Cuonzo's guy. He took him over other options. And right now, he's giving you nothing. Maybe it's rust from not playing for a season and a half (although honestly, it set off alarm bells for me when he didn't play at juco last year). Maybe it's that he's not fully healthy. But if I'm being honest, I haven't seen anything that tells me he's part of the solution for the future.
This season is going to be what it will be. It would be great to get Smith back, but at this point, none of us has a clue if it will happen. Teams like Missouri don't have must-wins. I mean, the ceiling was probably 17 wins and the NIT. That's out the window now. Barring a miraculous five wins in five days in Nashville (because, yes, I think they'll be playing on that first night), this season's going to end whenever they lose in the SEC Tournament.
And that's when the important stuff starts. Year three you should be in contention for the NCAA Tournament. I'm not going to say Cuonzo has to make it because realistically, next year is only year two of the rebuild because of the circumstances around year one where he basically had a go for broke mentality that was created when Washington fired Lorenzo Romar. In two years, this team absolutely has to be back in the tournament. It's a long time to wait. Nobody wants to take the slow road. But that's how you build programs. They took the quick route last year and frankly it didn't get them anything lasting or memorable. So now Cuonzo goes about building a program. If he's the guy to do it here, Missouri's on the bubble next year and dancing in two. If those things don't happen, then we can have real talks about the future. Until then, it's all a lot of hot air, getting mad not because your team is falling short of its potential, but simply because it doesn't have that much potential to begin with.
The backcourt holds promise for the future, both immediate and long term. The frontcourt is scary as hell. As I wrote in my post-game column, it's Jeremiah Tilmon and a whole lot of blind hope (which by this point in the season you can give up on).
Kevin Puryear is a senior. He's having a bad senior year. But I'm not going to pile on him. Evaluating this team is about the future, not about this season, and Puryear won't be here. Reed Nikko gives you everything he's got and gets the most out of his ability. Maybe there's something that will unlock a future for Mitchell Smith, but frankly, I've never seen it. The biggest concern for me is KJ Santos. This is Cuonzo's guy. He took him over other options. And right now, he's giving you nothing. Maybe it's rust from not playing for a season and a half (although honestly, it set off alarm bells for me when he didn't play at juco last year). Maybe it's that he's not fully healthy. But if I'm being honest, I haven't seen anything that tells me he's part of the solution for the future.
This season is going to be what it will be. It would be great to get Smith back, but at this point, none of us has a clue if it will happen. Teams like Missouri don't have must-wins. I mean, the ceiling was probably 17 wins and the NIT. That's out the window now. Barring a miraculous five wins in five days in Nashville (because, yes, I think they'll be playing on that first night), this season's going to end whenever they lose in the SEC Tournament.
And that's when the important stuff starts. Year three you should be in contention for the NCAA Tournament. I'm not going to say Cuonzo has to make it because realistically, next year is only year two of the rebuild because of the circumstances around year one where he basically had a go for broke mentality that was created when Washington fired Lorenzo Romar. In two years, this team absolutely has to be back in the tournament. It's a long time to wait. Nobody wants to take the slow road. But that's how you build programs. They took the quick route last year and frankly it didn't get them anything lasting or memorable. So now Cuonzo goes about building a program. If he's the guy to do it here, Missouri's on the bubble next year and dancing in two. If those things don't happen, then we can have real talks about the future. Until then, it's all a lot of hot air, getting mad not because your team is falling short of its potential, but simply because it doesn't have that much potential to begin with.
