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Analysis: Shaw is the prospect Mizzou fans have asked for

Blue Valley (KS) forward Aidan Shaw committed to Missouri on Friday morning. Shaw chose the Tigers over a final group of six that also included Kansas, Maryland, Arkansas, Iowa and Oklahoma State.

It's exactly the commitment Mizzou fans have been wanting for the last three years.

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Martin arrived in March of 2017 and injected instant energy into the program. He landed the top-ranked player in the country in Michael Porter Jr. That led to a flip from Jeremiah Tilmon, the No. 45 player in the country and then a week later to the commitment of Jontay Porter, the No. 25 player who had reclassified to play with his brother. The class created hysteria among Mizzou fans and unbridled optimism for the future of the Martin era.

Four years later, Mizzou fans were still waiting for recruiting news that even approached the same zip code of those first eight weeks. Tiger fans have been solidly divided into two camps in the years since that first one. One side has buried Martin's recruiting as a failure, saying he rarely if ever signed a player out of high school that was wanted by comparable programs. This crowd has crowed for Missouri to move on from the man who took over one of the three worst high-major programs in the country and has had it in the NCAA Tournament twice in four seasons. The other side has given Martin a pass for multiple recruiting misses and the lack of an NCAA Tournament win by pointing out that he took over following the worst three-year stretch in the program since Norm Stewart arrived to put Mizzou basketball on the map and asking anything more of him than what he has done was foolish and unrealistic. A mostly-silent majority has fruitlessly tried to remind each camp that the truth was likely somewhere in between the two extremes.

Don't get me wrong, Aidan Shaw is not a Porter level prospect. He will not fill Mizzou Arena on his own. He will not put the program on the national map by his mere presence. He will not create a wave of momentum that drags the program to a new level. And that's exactly why I think it's so important.

Martin got the Missouri job in March of 2017. Within days, he caught Porter Jr. on the rebound from Washington. The impending momentum led Mizzou to push all its chips in the middle, foregoing a steady program rebuild for a go-for-it now first year. It made sense. That's what you do when you're dealt pocket Porters...I mean, aces. But Michael's injury led to Missouri getting far less than it could have out of the deal and set the rebuild back at least a year.

Shaw is Missouri's highest-ranked high school commitment since Jeremiah Tilmon
Shaw is Missouri's highest-ranked high school commitment since Jeremiah Tilmon (USA Today)

That said, Missouri did almost nothing to capitalize on any momentum it had from that first year. Martin's second class was headlined by Torrence Watson, the No. 111 player in the country. The rest of the group consisted of solid role players (Javon Pickett), a flyer that worked out, at least for a while (Xavier Pinson) and quite a few that didn't (Christian Guess, Parker Braun, K.J. Santos).

The 2019 class did bring a top-100 player in No. 81 Tray Jackson, who transferred out after a year. It included a high school player whose fit always seemed strange (Mario McKinney) and a juco player (Axel Okongo) who was tough to explain as soon as it happened. As has become almost standard with Martin, the best player in the class might have been the least publicized (Kobe Brown).

If the 2018 and 2019 classes had provided ammo to fans who wanted to blast Martin's recruiting, 2020 was a gas can and a pack of matches. The Tigers brought in Jordan Wilmore and Ed Chang, who combined to play 22 minutes last season, all by Wilmore.

Those three recruiting classes feature just three players who remained on the roster as Martin began his second complete rebuild in four years. He brought in four transfers and five high school players. The benefit of the doubt crowd pointed to Martin's success with transfers and the potential ceiling of a high school class that featured five players, but none in the Rivals150. The detractors used the class as an example of more of the same, trying to win with players who weren't heavily pursued by the programs Tiger fans would like to believe are their equal.

To use recruiting rankings as the sole way to--or even the primary way--to evaluate a coach is foolish. But they do matter. You can win in college basketball without highly-ranked recruits. It is very unlikely you can win big in college basketball without highly-ranked recruits. You can make the tournament doing it the way Missouri has been doing it the last three years, but can you do anything once you're there?

That's why landing Shaw is a big deal, not only for the product on the court but for perception of the program. To see what recruiting and positive publicity can do for a program, you have to do nothing more than cross the road. Eli Drinkwitz is 6-6 in his Missouri career so far. But his recruiting has given fans hope for the future and has bought him equity and patience beyond what the results on the field might indicate there should be. Not all fans need immediate results. Despite all the talk of a microwave society that isn't willing to wait for a payoff, most fans are rational enough to suffer a little in the short term if there's reason to believe there will be a reward in the long term. Martin's critics have believed that not only was there short term suffering, but there was nothing to indicate the long term payoff.

Again, Shaw alone doesn't change that narrative. But he is an indication Martin might be able to change it. If he can get one Aidan Shaw, maybe he can get more. Mizzou isn't a program that's going to land the elite superstar on the recruiting trail all that often unless there is a special set of circumstances like there was with Porter. The top ten to 20 players in a class, the guys who might not go to college if they were allowed to go straight to the NBA, are largely still going to the places to which they've always gone. Relying on that changing isn't a way to build Missouri back to the point it can contend for a top four spot in the SEC and advantageous seeding in the NCAA Tournament. That needs to be done by living on that next level of recruit.

That's what Shaw is. He's not a day one starter who's changing a program. But he's the 57th-ranked player in the country and that's not worth nothing. Shaw is in the same mold as Phil Pressey (No. 61), Kim English (111), Michael Dixon (136) and Marcus Denmon (150). That 50-150 range is where Missouri has to make its bones in recruiting. None of them individually changes a program. But if you stack a few of them together and augment it through the transfer portal, now you're talking about a program that has a chance to get back to where Missouri fans think it should be.

Shaw's commitment won't silence the critics, especially if Martin's team underachieves on the court this season before he even arrives on campus. But if he can hit on a couple more top-150 kids in the 2022 or 2023 classes and start to make this kind of commitment the rule rather than the exception, the path forward is easier to see. Every journey begins with a single step. Is Shaw that step? There's no way to know for sure, but it at least looks like something that could get Mizzou's recruiting pointed in the right direction again.

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