I don’t keep in touch with every coach I’ve covered as a reporter. But I try to keep up with a lot of them.
With basketball season tipping off this week, I reached out to a few, as I normally do, asking how they’ve been, how they’re feeling about their teams, telling them good luck this season, etc.
One of the people I texted with was Texas State men’s basketball head coach Terrence “T.J.” Johnson. He told me there’s a lot of good energy floating around San Marcos, Texas, right now — the Bobcats’ football team is bowl-eligible for the first time since 2014 (there were some ROUGH seasons in between) and the volleyball team is at the top of its division (that’s normal for them). He told me his team’s got a ton of injuries to start the year off and he’s hoping they can “hold the rope” until those players return.
He asked me how I’ve liked the Missouri beat so far. I told him how much I’ve been enjoying it and how well everything’s gone.
“I love those guys out there,” T.J. told me. “C.Y. (Charlton Young) and (Dennis) Gates are elite people and coaches.”
I explained what Mizzou is up against this year, having to make up for Kobe Brown and trying to do it by committee rather than finding a one-to-one replacement.
“It’s reminding me a lot of the season after Nijal graduated,” I told him. Here’s why.
I was in my second year working for the San Marcos Daily Record back during the 2019-20 season. Texas State had a historically good player named Nijal Pearson, a 6-foot-5 senior wing who’d been voted to the All-Sun Belt First Team as a junior. Pearson was everything to the Bobcats — an under-recruited, homegrown talent who’d helped turn the team from a mid-major you didn’t think twice (or even once) about to a program you had to respect.
Pearson led vocally and by example. He carried the emotions of the team and played every game like it was his last — his motivation came from his older brother, who passed away from cancer when Pearson was young. He was nothing if not a hooper. By the time he graduated, he’d accumulated over 2,000 career points and held the Bobcats’ all-time scoring record.
But entering his senior season, Pearson still hadn’t made it to the NCAA tournament. He could’ve transferred to a high major somewhere to get there but he would’ve had to sit out a year due to the rules in place at the time. He couldn’t fathom being away from basketball that long, so it had to happen with Texas State.
He saved his best season for last, scoring a career-high 19.4 points per game as a senior. Everyone else on the roster averaged fewer than 9.0. Pearson was tabbed the Sun Belt Player of the Year. Texas State went 20-11 overall in the regular season and 13-7 in conference play, earning the No. 3 seed in the Sun Belt tournament due to a tie-breaker, missing out on a double-bye to the semifinals. Still, the Bobcats walloped Appalachian State in the quarterfinals, 85-68, a team they’d lost to previously because Pearson had to miss the game for the birth of his daughter.
The semifinals were set to be played in the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. Danny Kaspar, the head coach at the time who was in his seventh year with the program, said he’d never felt more confident about one of his teams being able to make it to the Big Dance. Pearson had led the way in the victory with 23 points, four rebounds, five assists and four steals. He ran over to the student section afterward to high-five fans, knowing it was the last game he’d ever play inside Strahan Arena.
But it ended up being the last game of his college career, period. The next day, the tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pearson was forced to move on — he’s had a successful career playing for teams in France, Finland, Germany and now Romania. How the 2019-20 season could’ve ended is a question everyone who followed that team still asks themselves.
There was a coaching change in the offseason for reasons I don’t want to rehash, leading to T.J. being promoted to interim head coach in September 2021. He was faced with an impossible question: How do you replace someone like Pearson?
The simple answer was there wasn’t a single player who could do all the things Pearson did. Texas State was predicted to finish fifth in its six-team division in the Sun Belt Coaches Poll. It all seemed bleak at the time.
But Texas State was experienced, rostering 10 upperclassmen. They had several key members of the rotation returning, players that had proven they could be stifling on the defensive end of the court. They just had to figure out how to score without Pearson. T.J. knew they’d have to do it by committee.
It was a struggle early on. The Bobcats got blown out in road games against Mississippi State and Texas. They dropped a home game to an NAIA school, Our Lady of the Lake, in one of the worst shooting performances I’ve ever witnessed. They played with the fourth-slowest pace in the nation, banking on their defense to carry them.
But they got better as the season progressed. The offense was more efficient. The 2019-20 team had an effective field goal percentage of 48.9 — the 2020-21 team got it up to 51.8%. The ‘19–20 squad had one player (Pearson) who averaged double-digit points — the ‘20-21 group had three. The ‘19-20 team’s starting five combined to score 44.8 points per game — the ‘20-21 team’s starters scored 52.2.
Texas State closed out its non-conference schedule with three consecutive wins. The team went 18-7 overall and 12-3 in league play, winning the Sun Belt regular season championship for the first time since joining the conference in 2013. T.J. was named the SBC Coach of the Year and signed to a long-term contract days after the season ended.
The Bobcats took the same approach in 2021-22 with four starters returning — they ended up being the team’s four highest scorers, one averaging 13.6 points, another averaging 11.7, another averaging 10.8 and the last averaging 9.5. They went 21-8 overall and 12-3 again in conference play, repeating as regular season champs and earning the first bid to the NIT in program history. T.J. was voted Coach of the Year for a second consecutive season.
That’s what it’s going to take for Mizzou to make up for what it lost in Kobe Brown. It can’t be somebody, it has to be everybody. They’re set up in a similar fashion as Texas State was in 2021, stocked with experience and retaining key members of last year’s rotation. The Bobcats are proof doing it by committee can work.
Monday’s 101-79 win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff was promising. Five different players reached double-digit points. Six handed out at least two assists. When Gates emphasizes how important it is for the Tigers to be unselfish, he means it.
Doing it against a SWAC team that won 10 games last season doesn’t count for much, though. Doing it against a Memphis team on Friday that’s made back-to-back trips to the NCAA tournament would count for a lot more.
Missouri officially signed the No. 2 class in the country yesterday.
Last month, I wrote about where the Class of 2024 stacks up in the Tigers’ history during the Rivals.com era (2002-present). There’s no other way to put it: it’s one of the program’s best all-time and could be even better if things go Gates’ way in its pursuit of five-star forward Jayden Quaintance.
But let’s take a step back and look at how Mizzou got here. Gates has recruiting as the top priority in his program. During an episode of KC Sports Network’s Mizzou, That’s Who podcast, assistant coach Dickey Nutt explained what Gates looks for when considering who he wants to go after.
“If we’re sitting in a meeting and you guys are all of our recruiters,” Nutt said, “the first thing he’s going to say is, ‘We’re going to find two things. No.1, we’re going to find an incredible person. The character is No. 1. No. 2, he better be able to shoot the ball.’”
Gates is an elite talent evaluator who gets his hands dirty to uncover gems early on in the process — a rarity for head coaches. When I spoke to Class of 2025 recruits on the Nike EYBL circuit, some of them told me they were originally offered by Gates when he was still at Cleveland State. That’s nearly two years ago. They would’ve been high school freshmen then.
The staff also appears to be taking advantage of a market inefficiency in recruiting high school players. It’s currently much more popular to go after known commodities in the transfer portal than to build around unproven high school players who could turn around and leave after just a year. That, combined with the Tigers rostering six graduate seniors, opened the door for Missouri to bring in this big of a class.
They’ve got contingency plans, too. Several four-star prospects showed interest in Mizzou, some who even took visits to see the campus, but ended up signing elsewhere because the Tigers didn’t have a spot for them. If they turn out to be players of value and decide to transfer elsewhere during their college careers, the Tigers would have a pre-established relationship with them that some other schools hunting in the portal might not.
It’s an old-school method, but an outside-the-box way to recruit in today’s time. I don’t think it could be working out any better for the team so far.
With basketball season tipping off this week, I reached out to a few, as I normally do, asking how they’ve been, how they’re feeling about their teams, telling them good luck this season, etc.
One of the people I texted with was Texas State men’s basketball head coach Terrence “T.J.” Johnson. He told me there’s a lot of good energy floating around San Marcos, Texas, right now — the Bobcats’ football team is bowl-eligible for the first time since 2014 (there were some ROUGH seasons in between) and the volleyball team is at the top of its division (that’s normal for them). He told me his team’s got a ton of injuries to start the year off and he’s hoping they can “hold the rope” until those players return.
He asked me how I’ve liked the Missouri beat so far. I told him how much I’ve been enjoying it and how well everything’s gone.
“I love those guys out there,” T.J. told me. “C.Y. (Charlton Young) and (Dennis) Gates are elite people and coaches.”
I explained what Mizzou is up against this year, having to make up for Kobe Brown and trying to do it by committee rather than finding a one-to-one replacement.
“It’s reminding me a lot of the season after Nijal graduated,” I told him. Here’s why.
I was in my second year working for the San Marcos Daily Record back during the 2019-20 season. Texas State had a historically good player named Nijal Pearson, a 6-foot-5 senior wing who’d been voted to the All-Sun Belt First Team as a junior. Pearson was everything to the Bobcats — an under-recruited, homegrown talent who’d helped turn the team from a mid-major you didn’t think twice (or even once) about to a program you had to respect.
Pearson led vocally and by example. He carried the emotions of the team and played every game like it was his last — his motivation came from his older brother, who passed away from cancer when Pearson was young. He was nothing if not a hooper. By the time he graduated, he’d accumulated over 2,000 career points and held the Bobcats’ all-time scoring record.
But entering his senior season, Pearson still hadn’t made it to the NCAA tournament. He could’ve transferred to a high major somewhere to get there but he would’ve had to sit out a year due to the rules in place at the time. He couldn’t fathom being away from basketball that long, so it had to happen with Texas State.
He saved his best season for last, scoring a career-high 19.4 points per game as a senior. Everyone else on the roster averaged fewer than 9.0. Pearson was tabbed the Sun Belt Player of the Year. Texas State went 20-11 overall in the regular season and 13-7 in conference play, earning the No. 3 seed in the Sun Belt tournament due to a tie-breaker, missing out on a double-bye to the semifinals. Still, the Bobcats walloped Appalachian State in the quarterfinals, 85-68, a team they’d lost to previously because Pearson had to miss the game for the birth of his daughter.
The semifinals were set to be played in the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. Danny Kaspar, the head coach at the time who was in his seventh year with the program, said he’d never felt more confident about one of his teams being able to make it to the Big Dance. Pearson had led the way in the victory with 23 points, four rebounds, five assists and four steals. He ran over to the student section afterward to high-five fans, knowing it was the last game he’d ever play inside Strahan Arena.
But it ended up being the last game of his college career, period. The next day, the tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pearson was forced to move on — he’s had a successful career playing for teams in France, Finland, Germany and now Romania. How the 2019-20 season could’ve ended is a question everyone who followed that team still asks themselves.
There was a coaching change in the offseason for reasons I don’t want to rehash, leading to T.J. being promoted to interim head coach in September 2021. He was faced with an impossible question: How do you replace someone like Pearson?
The simple answer was there wasn’t a single player who could do all the things Pearson did. Texas State was predicted to finish fifth in its six-team division in the Sun Belt Coaches Poll. It all seemed bleak at the time.
But Texas State was experienced, rostering 10 upperclassmen. They had several key members of the rotation returning, players that had proven they could be stifling on the defensive end of the court. They just had to figure out how to score without Pearson. T.J. knew they’d have to do it by committee.
It was a struggle early on. The Bobcats got blown out in road games against Mississippi State and Texas. They dropped a home game to an NAIA school, Our Lady of the Lake, in one of the worst shooting performances I’ve ever witnessed. They played with the fourth-slowest pace in the nation, banking on their defense to carry them.
But they got better as the season progressed. The offense was more efficient. The 2019-20 team had an effective field goal percentage of 48.9 — the 2020-21 team got it up to 51.8%. The ‘19–20 squad had one player (Pearson) who averaged double-digit points — the ‘20-21 group had three. The ‘19-20 team’s starting five combined to score 44.8 points per game — the ‘20-21 team’s starters scored 52.2.
Texas State closed out its non-conference schedule with three consecutive wins. The team went 18-7 overall and 12-3 in league play, winning the Sun Belt regular season championship for the first time since joining the conference in 2013. T.J. was named the SBC Coach of the Year and signed to a long-term contract days after the season ended.
The Bobcats took the same approach in 2021-22 with four starters returning — they ended up being the team’s four highest scorers, one averaging 13.6 points, another averaging 11.7, another averaging 10.8 and the last averaging 9.5. They went 21-8 overall and 12-3 again in conference play, repeating as regular season champs and earning the first bid to the NIT in program history. T.J. was voted Coach of the Year for a second consecutive season.
That’s what it’s going to take for Mizzou to make up for what it lost in Kobe Brown. It can’t be somebody, it has to be everybody. They’re set up in a similar fashion as Texas State was in 2021, stocked with experience and retaining key members of last year’s rotation. The Bobcats are proof doing it by committee can work.
Monday’s 101-79 win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff was promising. Five different players reached double-digit points. Six handed out at least two assists. When Gates emphasizes how important it is for the Tigers to be unselfish, he means it.
Doing it against a SWAC team that won 10 games last season doesn’t count for much, though. Doing it against a Memphis team on Friday that’s made back-to-back trips to the NCAA tournament would count for a lot more.
Missouri officially signed the No. 2 class in the country yesterday.
Last month, I wrote about where the Class of 2024 stacks up in the Tigers’ history during the Rivals.com era (2002-present). There’s no other way to put it: it’s one of the program’s best all-time and could be even better if things go Gates’ way in its pursuit of five-star forward Jayden Quaintance.
But let’s take a step back and look at how Mizzou got here. Gates has recruiting as the top priority in his program. During an episode of KC Sports Network’s Mizzou, That’s Who podcast, assistant coach Dickey Nutt explained what Gates looks for when considering who he wants to go after.
“If we’re sitting in a meeting and you guys are all of our recruiters,” Nutt said, “the first thing he’s going to say is, ‘We’re going to find two things. No.1, we’re going to find an incredible person. The character is No. 1. No. 2, he better be able to shoot the ball.’”
Gates is an elite talent evaluator who gets his hands dirty to uncover gems early on in the process — a rarity for head coaches. When I spoke to Class of 2025 recruits on the Nike EYBL circuit, some of them told me they were originally offered by Gates when he was still at Cleveland State. That’s nearly two years ago. They would’ve been high school freshmen then.
The staff also appears to be taking advantage of a market inefficiency in recruiting high school players. It’s currently much more popular to go after known commodities in the transfer portal than to build around unproven high school players who could turn around and leave after just a year. That, combined with the Tigers rostering six graduate seniors, opened the door for Missouri to bring in this big of a class.
They’ve got contingency plans, too. Several four-star prospects showed interest in Mizzou, some who even took visits to see the campus, but ended up signing elsewhere because the Tigers didn’t have a spot for them. If they turn out to be players of value and decide to transfer elsewhere during their college careers, the Tigers would have a pre-established relationship with them that some other schools hunting in the portal might not.
It’s an old-school method, but an outside-the-box way to recruit in today’s time. I don’t think it could be working out any better for the team so far.