In the two weeks since the Missouri basketball program welcomed a flood of newcomers to campus, Cuonzo Martin has taken on a different job. He’s no longer just head coach, but summer school professor.
Missouri has undergone a major roster overhaul since the 2020-21 season ended at the hands of Oklahoma in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. All five of the team’s seniors left the program, three for the NBA Draft and two for the transfer portal. Four other players opted to transfer, as well. As a result, Missouri welcomed eight newcomers to its roster during the month of June, four transfers and four freshmen — and that doesn’t count freshman Sean Durugordon, who enrolled in January to start training with the team but hasn’t appeared in a game yet.
So, with only two upperclassmen on the roster to teach the team the ropes, Martin has had to play instructor. His course: Missouri Basketball 101. He’s relishing the role.
“You have so many new guys, kind of go back to the drawing board, look over notes,” he told local media members Thursday. “You teach in a classroom. It’s not as if you have so many older guys, returning guys, they kind of teach the class for you. You’re teaching the class for the first time, and it’s fun.”
Missouri’s roster turnover has not only allowed Martin to teach his values and implement his culture, but experiment with what his team might look like on the floor. While this team’s identity is very much a work in progress — so far, team activities have been restricted to workouts, meaning the players haven’t had the ability to play actual basketball with one another outside of pickup games — Martin has a sense of how next year’s squad will play.
Expect some changes.
One of the things Martin has often iterated about the group of newcomers he added to the roster is that they should make the team more athletic — something that has been noticeably lacking the past few seasons. Returning starter Kobe Brown said he has already noticed that in practices.
“Everyone’s running and jumping,” Brown said. “I saw that the first day, and it immediately stuck out to me. Everyone here can dribble, put it on the ground, can get to the lane, can play on the rim. It’s a different team.”
Increased athleticism should manifest itself in a few improvements. For one, Brown noted, more athletic players are generally better defenders. Missouri’s defense, typically a hallmark of a Martin-coached team, flagged a bit as last season went on.
The Tigers already started playing a faster tempo last season, and a more athletic roster should allow it to continue that trend. Missouri ranked No. 163 nationally in adjusted tempo in 2020-21 according to KenPom, a rise of more than 100 spots from the season prior.
“Continue to open it up,” Martin said. “... The margin for error, certain teams, a team with 75 possessions versus 64 possessions — the efficiency still has to be the same, but we studied those numbers.”
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Martin also envisions his personnel this season being a bit more interchangeable than in years past. The term “positionless basketball” has become overused, and even Martin has talked about implementing such a system in years past without following through. But Martin said he spent the offseason picking the brains of NBA personnel, and without a traditional back-to-the-basket center like Jeremiah Tilmon in the starting lineup, he believes this year’s Missouri team will be better suited to play a style more like you’d see in the pros. That means putting five players on the perimeter on the offensive end, at times, and being able to switch all players on defense.
“I think, one, you can switch five ways,” Martin said. “We’ve done it some, but you can really switch five ways. … On the other end, if there’s a traditional big, you force him to defend you, you space out and play. I think when you have guys that can get to the rim and make plays and finish at the rim, that is tough to guard.”
Each of the four transfer additions who spoke to the media Thursday — Jarron Coleman, Amari Davis, Ronnie DeGray and DaJuan Gordon — said a system without rigid positions suits their skillsets. The 6-foot-7 DeGray, for instance, believes he can play both around the basket and on the perimeter. He said he’s spent most of his time since arriving on Missouri’s campus going through workouts and drills with the team’s guards.
“Whatever coach asks me, that’s what I try to do,” DeGray said. “Lately in the gym I’ve been working with the guards, doing ball handling in the morning, getting shots up. It seems like I’ll be on the perimeter more, but we can play small ball and I can guard anyone. I feel like the way we are now it’s going to be a really versatile year for all of us”
The biggest key to Missouri finally embracing a positionless style may not be any of the four transfers, but one of the new freshmen. Martin singled out St. Louis product Yaya Keita as the newcomer who has impressed him the most during workouts so far. The De Smet graduate missed all of last season with a torn ACL, but as a high school player, he was known as a strong rebounder who could use his athleticism to block shots and run the floor. Since arriving on campus, Martin said Keita has surprised him with his footwork and shooting stroke. Having those attributes in a frontcourt player should allow the Tigers to spread the floor more effectively.
“We don’t have a guy like Yaya go out and post because we want to open the post up,” Martin explained. “I just think Jeremiah was established and could do that, but I don’t want to just rely on it. We want to have the lane open so when guys penetrate and pass, you’ve got space to do what you need to do as a team.”
There’s still a lot of work to be done before Missouri gets its first chance to showcase its new identity in a game. So far this month, the priority for the team has been more simply getting to know one another than finding their fit in the scheme. Javon Pickett, the lone fourth-year player on the roster, has assumed the role of social coordinator, planning team dinners and other activities outside of workouts to help the players jell.
The early returns have been positive. If the team can come together as successfully on the floor, Missouri could look different than any other Martin-coached team during his tenure in Columbia.
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