Whether you are looking for more space to host those game day parties or looking to upgrade, Stein & Summers is your #1 fan in helping you find the home of your dreams! We have over 100 licensed agents servicing Kansas City, St. Joseph, and surrounding areas - including Kansas! Interest rates are at a record low while homes sales prices are at a record high! Contact us today to get started.
1) We feel like the basketball roster is likely complete. The Tigers added Ronnie DeGray last week and while they do have another spot left, it's our guess that spot doesn't get filled. The reason is simple: There's not a ton out there (and there's almost nothing out there that has previously been tied to Mizzou in any way). I know the argument is going to be "BUT THE ONLY GUYS WE HAVE WHO ARE BIGGER THAN 6-7 ARE A GUY WHO PLAYED 26 MINUTES LAST YEAR AND A FRESHMAN COMING OFF A TORN ACL." That's true. It's also true that conventional big men are becoming less and less common in college basketball. Many have been wanting Cuonzo Martin to fully embrace the smaller, faster style of play the last few years. He did to an extent, but not completely because he had Jeremiah Tilmon on his roster, which not a lot of teams have these days. They're going to play differently than they have the last few years. At the same time, they're going to play much more similarly to the way a lot of more modern offensive teams are playing. For every mismatch it might cause you on the defensive end, it can cause the other team a mismatch as well.
Now that we've said all of this, he'll probably add a 6-11 transfer tomorrow.
2) The key is whether this program is overall moving in the right direction. It's likely we won't have an immediate answer to that this year, but one way to take a look is to compare this year's roster to last year's. I'm going to try to do that.
Going into last season, I said I thought the upside for the team was a 6 or a 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament, a team that if things fell right could win a couple of games and make the Sweet 16. It turned out, that was pretty accurate. Missouri fell a little bit short of that, but not by a ton. Here was last year's roster:
SENIORS: Jeremiah Tilmon, Mitchell Smith, Dru Smith, Mark Smith, Drew Buggs
JUNIORS: Javon Pickett, Torrence Watson, Ed Chang, Xavier Pinson
SOPHOMORES: Kobe Brown, Parker Braun
FRESHMEN: Jordan Wilmore
Here is this year's:
SENIORS: Javon Pickett
JUNIORS: Kobe Brown, Amari Davis, DaJuan Gordon, Boogie Coleman
SOPHOMORES: Jordan Wilmore, Ronnie DeGray
FRESHMEN: Yaya Keita, Sean Durugordon, Anton Brookshire, Kaleb Brown, Trevon Brazile
So let's take the optimistic path: Pickett and Brown take steps forward next year. Coleman gives you a half step less than Dru Smith did, Gordon gives you a half step above what Mark Smith did, Amari Davis is somewhere in the neighborhood of Xavier Pinson (highs not as high, lows not as low). Wilmore is better than he was last year, Keita gives you 10-15 minutes a game and two of the other four freshmen are legitimate contributors.
If ALL of that happens, you could have a team that's somewhere close to last year's in my opinion. The one thing you haven't replaced is Tilmon (sorry, but as a freshman, Tilmon started all 33 games and averaged almost 20 minutes, while Wilmore was on the floor for 12 minutes total in SEC play). Some of that loss is mitigated because of the way they'll probably play, but running through the roster, I think the upside is you're looking at a team that is overall similar to what last year's team would have been if Tilmon wasn't on it.
So what's that mean? I'd say you're looking at a team that will be picked 10th or 11th in the SEC and it will be a pretty significant surprise if it's in the NCAA Tournament. A more realistic goal for next season is an NIT team. If that happens, there's reason for optimism. If they fall short of that, it's concerning.
3) Of course, you're not going to make a final judgment on the program based solely on next season. This is a roster that's going to feature five freshmen plus four incoming transfers that will have at least another season after this one. The only thing you're likely losing is Javon Pickett. I said all throughout last year that Missouri simply had to have a good enough offseason where you looked at a program that was probably going to take a step back, but wasn't going to fall off the cliff. I think they've done that. I think next year can be a step back and you can still maintain optimism for the future beyond next year. Here are things that next year's team will need to show you:
*Kobe Brown can be a consistent go-to guy. I'm not talking about 20 a game or anything, but he needs to show he's capable of being one of the two leading scorers on a regular basis.
*Coleman is capable of stepping up his game the same way Dru Smith did. He doesn't have to give you the same exact numbers or be an all-SEC player, but he has to show that he can do what he did at Ball State in the SEC.
*Keita is a guy who can build to being a starter and contributor in the middle.
*The freshman class has long term potential. I don't need any of them to start or score 15 points a game. I need to see flashes that they can all play. I need to not see any Ed Chang, Mario McKinney, Axel Okongo, Christian Guess repeats. In other words, I want to see them all get on the floor for some worthwhile minutes. If they can do that, it gives you some hope for the future. If we're sitting here in February going "How come two of those freshmen haven't seen the floor since the opener against Western Utah Valley State?" that's not an encouraging sign for the class.
4) We wrote some last week about how Mizzou had one of its more fruitful NFL Draft classes with five players being picked. The draft went to seven rounds in 1994. Since then, the most picks Missouri has had is six (2009, 2015) followed by the five this year. Obviously we don't know how this class is going to turn out. But it got me to wondering, what is Missouri's best NFL Draft class. Here are the top five in my opinion:
1981: Howard Richards, Eric Wright, James Wilder, Wendell Ray, Johnny Poe, Bill Whitaker, Ron Fellows. Ray was the only one that didn't have a multi-year NFL career (he played one season in the USFL). Wilder and Wright were all pros.
2009: Jeremy Maclin, Ziggy Hood, William Moore, Chase Coffman, Colin Brown, Stryker Sulak. Five of the six were in the league for mutliple years. Moore made a Pro Bowl.
2014: EJ Gaines, Justin Britt, Kony Ealy, Michael Sam. Three of the four had multi-year careers. Ealy was a Tom Brady comeback away from being a Super Bowl MVP.
2015: Shane Ray, Dorial Green-Beckham, Mitch Morse, Markus Golden, Bud Sasser, Marcus Murphy. Morse and Golden are still in the league. Ray and Murphy were for four years and DGB for two. Sasser's career was ended before it began due to health issues.
2016: Evan Boehm, Connor McGovern, Kentrell Brothers. All three played for at least four years. McGovern is still in the league (couldn't find Boehm or Brothers last year). None were stars, but all were solid players and productive mid-round picks.
If I had to put them in order, I'd go 1981, 2009, 2015, 2014, 2016. There are some Hall of Famers from Mizzou, but none of them really were drafted in years with other good NFL players. Obviously you can make an argument that the years Roger Wehrli, Johnny Roland, Kellen Winslow or Andy Russell were drafted should be on this list just for the presence of that one standout player, but I was interested more in looking for years in which Mizzou produced multiple NFL players so that's why I put these five draft classes here.
Last edited:
