11/9/2021 basketball Edit

Mizzou fans get first taste of an energized new roster

Gabe DeArmond • PowerMizzou

Publisher

Gabe has covered the Tigers for PowerMizzou.com since August of 2003 and been the site's publisher since 2006.

You may not have known the names on the back of the jerseys, but you had plenty of time to read them as the guys wearing them dove headfirst all over Norm Stewart Court on Tuesday night on their way to a season-opening 78-68 win over Central Michigan. If Cuonzo Martin keeps floor burns as an unofficial stat, he’s going to be posting a lot of crooked numbers on Wednesday morning.

Martin’s fifth team at Missouri featured nine new players, six of whom suited up for the first time in a Tiger uniform on Tuesday night (Trevon Brazile, Kaleb Brown and Dajuan Gordon weren’t able to play for various reasons). There’s going to be a bit of a get to know you period between Mizzou fans and their new team over the next few weeks, but if Tuesday night’s first impression is an indicator, it might be a group that might be pretty easy to get behind.

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Martin has always prided himself on being a coach who demands effort. You may not play well, but you will play hard or you won’t play. Even if the execution lagged at times on Tuesday, nobody watching could question the effort.

“More than anything that’s who I am,” Martin said. “Now whether or not you’ve seen it on a consistent basis is one thing, but that’s who I am. You have to play hard. You have to play as hard as you can play.

“That’s important in me. I think they have it in them.”

Over the last 14 years, Martin’s teams have developed a reputation for playing hard, but they usually do it in rock fights. It’s not pretty to watch even when it’s effective. But when he hit the transfer portal this offseason to replenish a roster that lost everything but Kobe Brown, Javon Pickett and Jordan Wilmore, he put a premium on athleticism. Missouri got up and down—and on—the court at a faster pace than Tiger fans have gotten used to seeing…at least for a first half after which they led 45-29. But even when things bogged down in the second half and the Chippewas got as close as two points, Missouri’s effort did not dwindle. Martin won’t allow it.

“Not many,” Jarron "Boogie" Coleman said when asked how many practices it took to understand the effort his new coach would demand. “If you don’t get it he’s gonna make sure you get it. He definitely made sure we played hard. That’s the biggest thing he’s on every day. Play hard."

At least one group of Tiger fans decided to go ahead and buy in before they’d seen the product. The student section at Mizzou Arena was packed to the last row for the opener and stayed that way until the end. Martin and his players made a concerted effort in the weeks leading up to the season to get the students on board. The coach and players visited classes and etc to drum up interest from what should be the most consistent group of attendees at Mizzou Arena. It worked.

“I loved it,” Coleman said. "We went in the tunnel before warmups and we came back out and it was all packed up. I came out smiling ear to ear.

“Just coming here and having fans here it felt real good,” Amari Davis, who played in an empty arena at Green Bay last year, said. “You could hear them from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. That really helped us.”

The vast majority of the cavernous building featured a lot more empty seats than full ones. The announced attendance was 7272, a little less than 50% of capacity. As an athletic department staffer acknowledged before the game “we’ve got a lot of work to do.” The fanbase that has slowly bled away in the decade since the Tigers last won an NCAA Tournament game isn’t going to come back all at once. They’re going to need to see quite a few more nights like Tuesday. Martin is happy to do his part to bring them all back.

“I’m not so much a rah-rah guy, but I like the energy,” the coach said. “I thought the student section was tremendous.”

If at the beginning of the night, the fans didn’t know many of the names, they learned some over the next two hours. Ball State transfer Coleman introduced himself to the fans making his first four three-pointers and scored 14 points with five assists. Davis, imported from Green Bay, chipped in 14 in 33 minutes, the most among the new faces. Former UMASS forward Ronnie DeGray III stuffed the stat sheet with 13 points, 12 rebounds, three blocks and an assist. Freshman Yaya Keita added six points and three boards in his first game in more than a calendar year after seeing his senior season in high school cut short by a torn ACL. Leading the way for the newcomers was old head Javon Pickett, charging at the rim on one end and chasing the Chippewas all over the floor on the other on the way to a team-high 18 points including a critical three-pointer when CMU had closed the gap to 64-62.

It wasn’t perfect. Tony Barbee’s zone defense confounded the Tigers for a long stretch of the second half. Martin said the Tigers got too comfortable with the lead in the second half. The post play was subpar. There were some moments where it seemed like it was all going to go wrong and Jon Rothstein was going to be tweeting about Mizzou being “the epitome of brutality.” But they won and they got this fresh start off on the right foot.

They may not be household names yet, but that will come. As far as first impressions go, these Tigers may not have blown anyone away, but they at least showed enough to interest those who showed up to come back in the future. Winning an entire fanbase back has to start somewhere.

“I felt it,” Martin said. “Normally I’m so locked in, but I felt the energy. That’s what makes great programs.”