Isiaih Mosley is back home and ready to go

For the fans, Friday night on Francis Quadrangle was their first chance to see the 2022-23 Missouri basketball team. For many of the players, it was their first experience in front of the Mizzou fanbase. For Isiaih Mosley, Mizzou Madness was a homecoming.

"I'm from here," Mosley said. "It's good to be back."

Mosley won a 2019 Class 5 championship in his senior season at Columbia's Rock Bridge High. Failing to garner offers from many high major programs, the three-star shooting guard signed with Missouri State and headed southwest to Springfield. All he did over the next three seasons was start 66 games, average 15.9 points, shoot 49.8% from the field, 41% from the three-point line and 87% from the free throw line. Mosley was a two-time all-Missouri Valley Conference selection for the Bears, including a junior season in which he was the nation's 15th-leading scorer and the runner-up for the MVC Player of the Year.

"I always felt like I had the potential to play good," Mosley said on Friday night. "It was just getting in getting in the right system. You know, my teammates at Missouri State, they really pushed me to be the best I can be. Same with my coaches."

Looking for a new challenge, Mosley entered the transfer portal after the season. He entertained thoughts of entering the NBA Draft and talked to coaches across the country. But in the end, the lure of his home town brought him back to Columbia as perhaps the most celebrated transfer of Dennis Gates' first recruiting class.

"I always wanted to play here. Even when I left Rock Bridge, I wanted to play here," Mosley said. "I used to talk to Dajuan (Harris) and Ja'Monta (Black) about it all the time. You know, being in the transfer portal, having coach Dennis Gates hit me up, the coaching staff is an amazing coaching staff, my teammates are amazing people. I wanted to come here and show love."

Mosley and the Tigers will start practice in the next few days in preparation for his first--only?--season at Mizzou. But Friday was an exhibition, a chance for the fans to celebrate their new team and the players to get their first taste of Mizzou. Or, in Mosley's case, to get reacquainted with it.

"it was crazy. It was electric," he said. "When I first came out, and everybody was screaming for me, it was it was crazy. It was a different type of feeling. So I can't wait to really get on the court."

That comes, officially, in a little more than five weeks, when the Tigers open against Southern Indiana on November 7th. Mosley is more than ready.

"It means a lot to come back and play in my home town in front of all these fans and all these people that I grew up with," he said. "It's a pleasure to be here."