The Cuonzo Martin Era is officially over at Mizzou. After five years, Martin is out with a final record of 78-77 and Missouri is looking for a new head basketball coach.
One of the things we try to do when there’s a coaching change is to explain how things got to this point and why they didn’t work for the guy who’s on his way out. Our focus going forward will be exclusively on finding Martin’s replacement, but today we want to look at why there needed to be a replacement at all.
When Martin was hired, he was a fairly known commodity. He’d been at Missouri State, Tennessee and Cal for three years each, largely done a good job at each stop. He’d won at least 18 games in every season but his first, but also lost double digit games in every season except one (in which he won nine). At the time, I called it a high floor, low ceiling hire. Martin was never going to be terrible, but his track record showed he wasn’t ever likely to be great either. That was my main concern when they made the hire. But Missouri was banking on Martin’s connections in St. Louis to resonate and allow him to do things on the recruiting trail that, honestly, had never been done at Mizzou.
It kind of started out that way with a first-year class that was obviously supercharged with Michael Porter Jr. and Jontay Porter, but also included Jeremiah Tilmon and transfer Kassius Robertson. Even though MPJ played only three games and about 60 minutes in his career, the Tigers made the NCAA Tournament and Martin had done exactly what he was hired to do—drag Missouri back from one of the worst programs in the country to respectability. And, oh by the way, he did a hell of a coaching job to get there in that first year.
That year didn’t pay off the way many had hoped, but it did still put the Tigers back in the conversation of respectable, competitive programs. There was a two-fold price that was paid, though. First, it delayed Missouri’s true rebuilding process by a year. It was a one-off, all-chips-in-the-middle shot because everyone knew all along that Porter wasn’t going to be in Columbia for more than a year. And it didn’t pay off. I’ll get into the second reason it hurt in a little bit.
Anyway, Mike left, Jontay got hurt, that killed the second season, which ended 15-17. The next season was 15-16 and there was a little impatience, but honestly, this was about what should have been expected when Martin took over the program in the shape it was. So in year four, when he got Missouri to No. 10 in the country with an experience-laden team in a pandemic after a 13-3 start, things looked pretty good. Two tournaments in four years triggered two one-year contract extensions and that didn’t seem like a problem because no way you’re going to have to think about firing a coach who took over one of the worst programs in the country and took it to two tournaments in four seasons. Right?
Well, turns out, no.
Martin and Xavier Pinson couldn’t get along, he didn’t have much interest in Mark Smith playing his fifth season in Columbia and so he went out and completely remade the roster. He got four transfers and five high school kids and set out on a season that most thought would be a rebuilding year. It was, but it was so much worse than expected. Missouri finished 12-21, lost 13 games by double digits and seven by 20 (plus three more by 19). The transfers mostly looked overmatched at this level, the recruiting class amounted to Trevon Brazile and a few flashes here and there from Kaleb Brown, but nothing else. Martin was out, not only because this season was bad, but because there really isn’t any sign that it was going to get any better. He’s bringing back most of the same guys next year, doesn’t have a difference-making recruiting class coming in and if you’d kept him for another season, you were really putting him in a situation where he was coaching for his job with virtually the same team that just went 12-21. In all likelihood, bringing him back was delaying the inevitable—and the start of another makeover—by 12 months. In addition, the program isn’t Kim Anderson level bad, but the fan apathy is. And that’s a problem.
So many things could have changed this. If either Porter injury doesn’t happen, things might look different. The first team might have been a top four seed with Michael. The second would certainly have had a winning record and might even have been in tournament contention (though that seems like a stretch) with Jontay. If he’d simply won either one of the NCAA Tournament games he played in, we’re likely not talking about why he isn’t employed anymore. He just didn’t build up quite enough good will in his first four seasons to survive a disaster in year five.
But ultimately, Martin is getting fired for the same reason most coaches get fired: His recruiting wasn’t good enough. You can nitpick his game day decisions or his offensive system, say he’s not exciting enough or find a number of other things you think are the reason he’s out. But ultimately the reason he’s out is that he didn’t get enough good players. I want to go into why that is.
First of all, there’s something to the idea that Martin is cleaner than most coaches out there and that probably costs him some recruits. That’s fine. But that’s also his choice. What makes Martin an admirable human being also limits him professionally. If you’re going to work in the sewers and make every effort to make sure you don’t get dirty, you’re probably not going to get as much accomplished as the dudes that are crawling down in the crap not worrying if some gets on their clothes.
But just saying “Well, everyone cheats except him” is too easy. This is where we go back to that first recruiting class.
The Michael Porter Jr. experience changed Martin and his approach. Some of what I’m going to say here is my belief based on being around the program. Some of it’s stuff that I’ve picked up from people closer to the program than I am. But I’m confident in my assessment of what happened.
Dealing with Porter and all that came with him was challenging. There’s no question. There’s drama associated with a lot of players, but this was at a different level. Managing the locker room would already have been a job, but once Porter got hurt, it became even worse. From the team not knowing he was getting surgery (Martin legitimately didn’t find out until he was already in Dallas) to the social media posts to the day-in, day-out obligation of dealing with someone who hadn’t played at all while the guys who actually had played were trying to make an NCAA Tournament, nothing about it was easy. Without airing too much dirty laundry, I’ll summarize it by saying the closer you were to the team, the less excited you were about what the Michael Porter Jr. experience became. Everyone put on a happy face and said the right things, but it was a difficult, strained arranged marriage from the start.
I think it changed the way Martin recruited.
One of the things we try to do when there’s a coaching change is to explain how things got to this point and why they didn’t work for the guy who’s on his way out. Our focus going forward will be exclusively on finding Martin’s replacement, but today we want to look at why there needed to be a replacement at all.
When Martin was hired, he was a fairly known commodity. He’d been at Missouri State, Tennessee and Cal for three years each, largely done a good job at each stop. He’d won at least 18 games in every season but his first, but also lost double digit games in every season except one (in which he won nine). At the time, I called it a high floor, low ceiling hire. Martin was never going to be terrible, but his track record showed he wasn’t ever likely to be great either. That was my main concern when they made the hire. But Missouri was banking on Martin’s connections in St. Louis to resonate and allow him to do things on the recruiting trail that, honestly, had never been done at Mizzou.
It kind of started out that way with a first-year class that was obviously supercharged with Michael Porter Jr. and Jontay Porter, but also included Jeremiah Tilmon and transfer Kassius Robertson. Even though MPJ played only three games and about 60 minutes in his career, the Tigers made the NCAA Tournament and Martin had done exactly what he was hired to do—drag Missouri back from one of the worst programs in the country to respectability. And, oh by the way, he did a hell of a coaching job to get there in that first year.
That year didn’t pay off the way many had hoped, but it did still put the Tigers back in the conversation of respectable, competitive programs. There was a two-fold price that was paid, though. First, it delayed Missouri’s true rebuilding process by a year. It was a one-off, all-chips-in-the-middle shot because everyone knew all along that Porter wasn’t going to be in Columbia for more than a year. And it didn’t pay off. I’ll get into the second reason it hurt in a little bit.
Anyway, Mike left, Jontay got hurt, that killed the second season, which ended 15-17. The next season was 15-16 and there was a little impatience, but honestly, this was about what should have been expected when Martin took over the program in the shape it was. So in year four, when he got Missouri to No. 10 in the country with an experience-laden team in a pandemic after a 13-3 start, things looked pretty good. Two tournaments in four years triggered two one-year contract extensions and that didn’t seem like a problem because no way you’re going to have to think about firing a coach who took over one of the worst programs in the country and took it to two tournaments in four seasons. Right?
Well, turns out, no.
Martin and Xavier Pinson couldn’t get along, he didn’t have much interest in Mark Smith playing his fifth season in Columbia and so he went out and completely remade the roster. He got four transfers and five high school kids and set out on a season that most thought would be a rebuilding year. It was, but it was so much worse than expected. Missouri finished 12-21, lost 13 games by double digits and seven by 20 (plus three more by 19). The transfers mostly looked overmatched at this level, the recruiting class amounted to Trevon Brazile and a few flashes here and there from Kaleb Brown, but nothing else. Martin was out, not only because this season was bad, but because there really isn’t any sign that it was going to get any better. He’s bringing back most of the same guys next year, doesn’t have a difference-making recruiting class coming in and if you’d kept him for another season, you were really putting him in a situation where he was coaching for his job with virtually the same team that just went 12-21. In all likelihood, bringing him back was delaying the inevitable—and the start of another makeover—by 12 months. In addition, the program isn’t Kim Anderson level bad, but the fan apathy is. And that’s a problem.
So many things could have changed this. If either Porter injury doesn’t happen, things might look different. The first team might have been a top four seed with Michael. The second would certainly have had a winning record and might even have been in tournament contention (though that seems like a stretch) with Jontay. If he’d simply won either one of the NCAA Tournament games he played in, we’re likely not talking about why he isn’t employed anymore. He just didn’t build up quite enough good will in his first four seasons to survive a disaster in year five.
But ultimately, Martin is getting fired for the same reason most coaches get fired: His recruiting wasn’t good enough. You can nitpick his game day decisions or his offensive system, say he’s not exciting enough or find a number of other things you think are the reason he’s out. But ultimately the reason he’s out is that he didn’t get enough good players. I want to go into why that is.
First of all, there’s something to the idea that Martin is cleaner than most coaches out there and that probably costs him some recruits. That’s fine. But that’s also his choice. What makes Martin an admirable human being also limits him professionally. If you’re going to work in the sewers and make every effort to make sure you don’t get dirty, you’re probably not going to get as much accomplished as the dudes that are crawling down in the crap not worrying if some gets on their clothes.
But just saying “Well, everyone cheats except him” is too easy. This is where we go back to that first recruiting class.
The Michael Porter Jr. experience changed Martin and his approach. Some of what I’m going to say here is my belief based on being around the program. Some of it’s stuff that I’ve picked up from people closer to the program than I am. But I’m confident in my assessment of what happened.
Dealing with Porter and all that came with him was challenging. There’s no question. There’s drama associated with a lot of players, but this was at a different level. Managing the locker room would already have been a job, but once Porter got hurt, it became even worse. From the team not knowing he was getting surgery (Martin legitimately didn’t find out until he was already in Dallas) to the social media posts to the day-in, day-out obligation of dealing with someone who hadn’t played at all while the guys who actually had played were trying to make an NCAA Tournament, nothing about it was easy. Without airing too much dirty laundry, I’ll summarize it by saying the closer you were to the team, the less excited you were about what the Michael Porter Jr. experience became. Everyone put on a happy face and said the right things, but it was a difficult, strained arranged marriage from the start.
I think it changed the way Martin recruited.
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