2019 Tiger Mailbag: 11th Edition

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GD: This is a somewhat creative, if strange, way of asking "Will you predict what the NCAA is going to do?" I will not because I cannot because when it comes to the NCAA all thoughts of logic go out the window. I don't have a clue what's going to happen. There is optimism around Mizzou, but that's based on them looking at the penalties and thinking "These make no sense," not anything they've been told by anyone. I expect we'll get a resolution some time around September. Until then, I fully expect to be asked some version of this question every week--hopefully more often without any threats to my physical well-being--but I won't have any answers for you.

GD: Started the spring break boozing early I see. The best case scenario is for Missouri to win at least two or three games and somehow manage an NIT invitation. I don't see that as very realistic, to be honest. Some have expressed desire to see Missouri accept a CBI invite. Personally, I hope that doesn't happen. Your young players aren't gaining a lot by playing the teams that are going to be in that event (the last high-major team to play in it was Colorado in 2015 and even the good mid-majors are in the NIT). The fans aren't going to care. Honestly, I can't imagine we'd see an inspired effort from Missouri. To answer the original question, if Mizzou somehow pulled off a miracle and won the tournament this week, I assume they'd be around a 13 seed.

GD: This is pretty easy. I thought Frank Haith's first team had a shot to make the tournament. I did not think it would win 31 games and be in the conversation for a No. 1 seed, especially after losing Laurence Bowers to a knee injury in the pre-season (a story we all found out about while covering a Board of Curators meeting in St. Louis...fun day). That entire season was like a magic carpet ride. They came out of the gates guns blazing, absolutely destroyed Cal and Notre Dame in the Guardian's Classic, and never looked back. Well, until the end at least.

GD: It's just too early to tell. The first commitment will likely be a guy that visits for spring practice or for a camp and just absolutely knows where he wants to go without a visit. It won't be a super highly rated kid, so it won't excite the board much. I can't give you a name yet. We just aren't to that point in the process. Commitments that come this early aren't usually super high on the radar yet.

GD: I don't think they underachieved. I said after Jontay went down that expectations were pretty much out the window. I believe I picked them to finish somewhere around 16 wins in the regular season, but admitted that seemed like it might be a little bit high. They have enough talent that the NIT was a possibility (I mean, they blew five double-digit leads and lost two other games they led by nine at one point, so they weren't far off), but I don't view this season as underachieving either. I view it as disappointing. 14-16 is always disappointing, even if you don't have the talent to be a lot better than that.

As for next year, I can't yet give you a target expectation. So much will happen with early entries to the NBA, transfers and recruiting (not just at Mizzou but for all of its opponents) that you can't say who should be good, bad or mediocre yet. But my big picture expectation is that a year from today, Missouri is headed to the SEC Tournament with an NCAA bid still a possibility. As I've repeatedly said, I won't call it a failure if they don't get in, but if they remain mostly healthy, they should be in the NCAA conversation at the end of next year. If they aren't, it will definitely be a disappointment.

GD: It's just basic common sense as the roster is constructed today. Maybe Missouri is pursuing another power forward type, but there is absolutely no evidence to support that at this point in time. Now, those around the program do like him and think he can be a player (I've legitimately never seen a kid signed where the staff thinks anything to the contrary), but my statement that he's a starter from day one is just based on watching this season. Unless, KJ Santos, Mitchell Smith or Parker Braun takes a giant leap from this year, it makes sense to throw the freshman in the fire and get him going as soon as possible.

GD: Pickett had the best year. He was the most ready to go in game one and the most consistent from start to finish. And based on most thoughts that he would be at best a rotational player until his junior year, he also exceeded my expectations the most.

That said, I think the other two have higher ceilings over the course of the next three seasons. Watson struggled with confidence most of the season and still managed to make more three-pointers than any freshman in Missouri history. He also added a drive to the basket aspect to his game in the second half of the season. Pinson was wildly up and down (both in playing time and performance) but you saw flashes of things nobody has done at Missouri since Phil Pressey. If you can harness the mistakes and not take away the great playsn (and add 20 pounds), you've got yourself a heck of a point guard.

With Pickett, I don't make that statement as an insult. If he improves even marginally each of the next three seasons, he can be a heck of a player, in line for some sort of all-conference honors down the road. But he's a year older than the other two and had the most college ready body. In other words, I think his room for improvement is a little less than the others because he was closer to his ceiling as a freshman than they were.

GD: We've never really talked to assistant basketball coaches a whole lot, so we're going to keep this to football. I always liked interviewing David Yost. He'd keep you on your toes. He enjoyed being a smartass and throwing you off your game, especially once he got to know you. And he'd make you wait forever to actually do the interview. But he also usually gave you substantive answers. On the right day, Cornell Ford has always been a very insightful interview and Andy Hill is (almost) always in a good mood and worth talking to. Josh Henson definitely deserves mention here too, as does DeMontie Cross. I don't know him as well as the others, but so far Derek Dooley is always entertaining.

On the flip side, Dave Steckel was an acquired taste that I didn't acquire at all until he left Mizzou. He didn't like the media and he let you know it. He got a little better once he became the defensive coordinator and had to do it more often, but for about the first six or seven years I covered him, I only talked to Stec on signing day. It wasn't because I was intimidated or anything, I just didn't have any desire to talk to a guy who was clearly going out of his way to make the interview uncomfortable and unproductive. I did have him on the podcast after he became the head coach at Missouri State and he was great. People who knew him away from football when he was here always talked about what a great guy he was, but that was really the first time I saw it because when he was here, he simply wasn't enjoyable for reporters to deal with most of the time. Brian Jones was always a tough interview too, not because he wasn't a good guy, but just because he didn't talk very much. Craig Kuligowski and Dave Christensen could be great and could seem like they really liked you or could be terrible and seem like they didn't even know who you were. It just depended on the day. That statement goes for a whole lot of people.

GD: We're getting close to the time things will ramp up a bit on both sides. In hoops, the season should be over in the next few days and high school and junior college seasons are either over or close, so you'll start to see more activity as far as targets and visits go. However, as I've said a lot, Cuonzo Martin seems to recruit in stealth mode. Nobody ever knows he's recruiting a guy until the kid shows up on campus. In football, we'll have some visits and such over the course of spring football and probably a handful for the spring game. But the big activity is really during camp season. May usually yields a few commitments and then Night at the Zou ought to be in July sometime.

GD: It seems that Christopher is the furthest along in that process of the three. He's already taken an official visit to Missouri. But that also might simply be because he's the most responsive to interviews and we know a little bit more publicly about his recruitment. I don't know if any of them have said when they plan to sign, but I think more players sign in November than don't. I'd expect at least two of those guys will make decisions in the early signing period, though I'm not sure which ones are more likely to decide early versus waiting.

GD: I'm not going to pretend it hasn't been a problem. Even as recently as the last game it was problem. But if you watch college basketball, end of half and end of game possessions almost always seem to result in a lot of dribbling and a three without a pass. Quite often it's guarded and/or off-balance. This isn't just a Mizzou problem.

We also focus much more on the ones that don't work. The game that sticks out to me is Georgia last year. Cuonzo Martin ran an absolutely perfect play that resulted in Kassius Robertson, his best shooter, getting a wide open three from the left side. It just didn't go in. But that's not a bad possession. In fact, it's a great one. The shot just didn't go in. I'm sure there have been others like that too, but that's the one I remember immediately.

GD: 1) We get there at the start or within a few minutes of the start

2) We see the entire practice, but can't report on specifics of it

3) I'd say there are usually five to ten people. We are there, the P-D, the Star, the Trib, usually the Missourian and a TV station or two. Then there are a handful of photographers on hand.

As for your last question, I'm going to let you in on a dirty little secret: We don't really sit around and watch every play intently and analyze practice. I mean, we pay enough attention to know what's going on, but we're there to write about things and if we can't write about practice, we don't really care to chart plays or focus in on a position group or spend a whole bunch of time gathering a lot of information we can't use. Like I said, we watch, but we're not there studying. I've probably been to well over a thousand Missouri football practices at this point. They're really not all that exciting.

GD: Nobody asked because there's a time to talk about that and it's not until after the season is over. It won't surprise anybody if that's the case. I certainly haven't been told that he'll leave, but it's definitely something we'll monitor because you are being foolish if you don't acknowledge it as a possibility.

GD: I never saw Bradley play, I've never seen Robinson play and I haven't really seen a ton of Kelly Bryant in action. The James Franklin comparison might be fair. Franklin was probably a little more powerful, Bryant a little taller. The numbers indicate that might be a decent comparison, but I can't say for sure. As for Robinson and Bradley, I've got no clue. I think Bryant and Robinson are probably both kind of like Wes Welker playing quarterback (see what I did there?)

GD: This is Cuonzo's style. He has been a head coach for 11 years. Over that time period, if you take the rankings for each team, here is where he ranks:

Points Scored: Average of 199.3. He has never had a team in the top 100 scoring offenses in the country. His second Missouri State team was 11th and that was the high. This year's Missouri team is 307th, which is the second lowest of his career, behind only his first Missouri State team which ranked 309th and was generally dreadful.

Points Allowed: Average of 76.8. He has had only two teams rank outside the top 100 as far as total defense goes. His worst was his second team at Cal that was 192nd (but won 20 games). He has twice had a team finish 18th in the country in points allowed.

A better stat might be adjusted tempo, so let's look at where his teams have ranked there:

298, 241, 311, 201, 271, 313, 123, 162, 290, 296, 324

That averages out to 235th in the country in adjusted tempo. He has had three teams rank in the 300s and two more within four spots of that. He's only had two teams rank higher than 200 (if you take those two out of the mix, the average becomes 256th).

This is his style. It's what he does. I know it was a major complaint of Tennessee fans. They just thought it was boring basketball. Of course, he was also following Bruce Pearl, who ranked in the top 20 in adjusted tempo his first three years in Knoxville and the top 50 in his first four years at Auburn. So it was something they weren't used to. I think that's less of an issue for Missouri fans. This style is pretty similar to what Norm Stewart did a lot of the time (although I'd argue his best team that I saw which was 1991 with Doug Smith and Anthony Peeler probably didn't play slow).

The one concern I have about this style is that if you're only scoring 65 points a game, you pretty much always have to be good defensively. Because anybody that runs into a hot night from three-point range or gets you into an up-tempo game where you're not comfortable can beat you. They don't even have to shoot that well to do it.

Missouri is 7-3 when it scores 70 points this year (however, the losses are to Temple, LSU and South Carolina, three of the better teams they played). But the Tigers have scored 80 only twice and scoring 70 just ten times is a low number. Now, I'll give you this probably isn't one of the more offensively skilled teams he's coached, but they actually did shoot the three pretty well (35.9% for 99th in the country). So what that tells you is two things: They play incredibly slow (324th in tempo) and they turn the ball over way too much (315th in turnover percentage). You probably didn't need me to provide a bunch of numbers to know that.

Bottom line, he's never going to be a run and gun coach, but his teams at Missouri have been even slower and lower scoring than most of the teams in his career. The hope is that part of the reason is he doesn't have all of his guys in place and once he gets more of them he can open it up a little bit.

GD: The deadline to declare for the NBA Draft is June 11th. Porter's intentions will certainly be known privately before then (if they aren't already) and I would imagine it will be known publicly before then. My guess is that Cuonzo has dealt with enough "will he or won't he" with the Porters over the last two years and when a decision is made, it's going to get out pretty quickly. Not saying he's going to push anybody out the door, but I don't think he has any desire to have to answer that question any more times than he already has in the last two seasons. The coaching timetable could be a little more delicate. First off, I don't know for certain that Michael Porter Sr. won't be back. He might. But even if he isn't, you don't want to do it the day after Jontay leaves or anything. I mean, we're all smart enough to know why he got the job, but still, you don't want to do anything that just flat out proves it. So there would be a delay of a couple of weeks at least I would think between those decisions.