Notebook: Martin, Mizzou bracing for uncertain season

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The Missouri basketball team took the court for its first official practice of the year Wednesday morning, kickstarting preparation for the 2020-21 season. Yet what that season will look like remains a mystery, both for Missouri and the sport as a whole.

Speaking to reporters via Zoom following the practice, coach Cuonzo Martin said the team is working to solidify its non-conference schedule, but there are “so many moving targets right now.” The main focus currently is finalizing a spot in an early-season tournament in Orlando. Missouri was originally scheduled to play in the Myrtle Beach Invitational, but the event got moved as a result of COVID-19.

Other than that, Martin doesn’t know who Missouri will play prior to the start of conference play on Dec. 29 or 30, but he knows Kansas won’t be on the schedule. The Tigers and Jayhawks were scheduled to renew the Border War rivalry in Kansas City’s Sprint Center on Dec. 12, but the Kansas City Star reported earlier this week that the game will be postponed to the 2026 season, meaning the series will resume in Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse during the 2021-22 season.

“Right now, we're still scheduled to play in Orlando, it’s just a matter of, again, solidifying teams, and we're still working toward our schedule as we speak,” Martin said. “But, I mean, just even to this day, there's so many moving targets right now. There's so much uncertainty.

The uncertainty doesn’t only include who Missouri will face this season, but how many games it will play and what the postseason might look like. As the postponement of this week’s football games between Missouri and Vanderbilt as well as Florida and LSU illustrated, even once a schedule is set, plans are still subject to change.

Martin admitted he “still doesn’t feel totally comfortable” with the idea of having college basketball without a bubble. In an ideal world, he said, players wouldn’t go anywhere but their homes or Mizzou Arena. He acknowledged that’s unrealistic, and his point was not that the season should be canceled or bubblized, which he said would be unfair to the players, but that programs should proceed with caution. Missouri, for instance, didn’t require players to return to campus during the summer for what usually would have been eight hours per week of mandatory activity. From the start of classes until Wednesday, the staff gave players three days off per week instead of the usual two.

“That’s why we didn’t bring our guys back in June or July, because I didn’t feel comfortable with it. I really didn’t,” Martin said.” And I still don’t feel comfortable with it. But it’s what we have to do. If one of our players say, ‘Coach, I don’t want to play,’ I would respect his decision, because I care about his safety and well-being first and foremost. But here we are right now, and we’ll take it one day at a time.”

Martin said some Missouri players have already tested positive for COVID-19, but everyone is currently healthy. It’s not just the impact of the virus on infected individuals that he’s worried about, though. He pointed out that, in a sport with as few participants as basketball, the loss of three or four scholarship players for two weeks at a time could be a huge blow. Given the protocols adopted by the NCAA, which state that “high-risk” contacts of an infected individual must quarantine for at least two weeks and cannot test out of quarantine, such absences seem inevitable.

“When you’re competing and you’re playing at a high level and then all of a sudden you lose one or two or three key guys, then all of a sudden that puts you back 14-plus days, that’s a hard thing to deal with,” Martin said. “... You’re also talking about not having the opportunity to maybe go home for Christmas, because you want your guys to stay intact, and just a lot of things you deal with.”

That’s part of the reason Martin supported a proposal that the NCAA approved Wednesday, which will allow all winter sport athletes to compete this season without using up a year of eligibility. That means Missouri’s entire roster, including the five seniors, could theoretically return for the 2021-22 season. Given that different teams, and likely different individuals within the same team, are almost certainly going to play different numbers of games depending on their league or the presence of the virus on their squad, Martin believes not having this season count against athletes is the most fair option.

That inconsistency, though, will likely make fairness impossible when it comes to selecting an NCAA Tournament field. After last season’s tournament was canceled due to COVID-19, the NCAA has already made it clear that having the event will be a top priority this season, but Martin expressed concern about the ability to differentiate between teams that have played different numbers or games or played without quarantined players for various stretches during a season.

“I think it’s unfair, without question, because what happens, nobody will play the same number of games,” Martin said. “So there’s so much inconsistency, so how do you pick 68 teams for the NCAA Tournament? How do you do that? I don’t know how you do it with so much inconsistency.”

Martin clarified that he’s not trying to make any sort of preemptive excuses for a team expected to contend for an NCAA Tournament berth. He actually said Missouri’s experience — the Tiger roster features eight scholarship players in at least their third year in the program — should give the team an edge this season.

Point guard Dru Smith agreed, saying the group understands Martin’s system and how to play with one another and has a gameplan it is confident in. All the team can do now is practice and prepare like it normally would and deal with the schedule one game at a time.

“In a lot of ways, though they haven’t experienced COVID, they’ve experienced bumps in the road and making adjustments,” Martin said of his roster. “Dealing with guys going down, how do you do this. So they’ve seen that part, and I think they’re resilient enough where whatever the next thing is, they’ll do that. We don’t have guys that complain and make excuses. We play the hands that are dealt and let the chips fall where they may.”

By the end of last season, Missouri had transformed from an offense that wanted to play inside-out, posting up its big men and surrounding them with shooters on the perimeter, into a downhill, guard-dominant system. Martin further embraced the shift when he added graduate transfer Drew Buggs to the roster during the offseason.

Even though Buggs has only been practicing with the full team for about a month, the all-time leading assist man at Hawaii has made a strong impression on his teammates and head coach.

“He really gets into the paint and looks for the open guy,” senior guard Mark Smith said of Buggs. “I feel like he just has a different confidence to him. He plays with a good pace, and he’s always looking for an open man, so he’s fun to play with.”

Martin described Buggs as a physical, pass-first point guard who is capable of knocking down open three-pointers but would rather create opportunities for his teammates. He said Buggs’ passing ability encourages his teammates to run the floor more often because they know he will make the right decisions in transition. Buggs also gives Missouri a third ball-handler, along with Dru Smith and Xavier Pinson, and Martin said the three of them have been on the floor together at times. Pinson, who said he has been guarding Buggs at practice, used the words “tremendous” and “phenomenal” to describe him.

“He does a great job of getting into the lane,” Martin said of Buggs. “He’s a physical body, so if you haven’t seen him up close, his stature is like Dru Smith, same stature. Strong, shifty, knows how to pass the ball. … Unlike X and Dru, scoring is probably the second or third thing on his list. X and Dru are probably guys who are more built to score like that than they’re willing to pass the ball, but he’s a guy that he wants to pass and get guys the ball.”

While having its point guards penetrate into the lane and create scoring opportunities may be the top priority for Missouri this season, the offense certainly won’t neglect Jeremiah Tilmon. The talented big man has become the x-factor for the Tigers. He’s been dominant at times during his first three college seasons, but foul problems, injuries and mental lapses have made his production inconsistent.

After declaring for the NBA Draft and receiving feedback from scouts during the offseason, Tilmon is entering his senior season with clear objectives in mind, some new and some familiar. He said the biggest areas NBA personnel wanted him to improve were rebounding and ability to run the floor. As a result, he’s worked on his conditioning and laid out a goal to average 10 rebounds per game, which would blow his career high of 5.9 rebounds per game in 2018-19 out of the water.

“They just really told me that I need to run the floor,” Tilmon said of his feedback from NBA scouts. “I need to be able to hit that trail three and get rebounds.”

The other offseason emphasis for Tilmon has been a familiar one: his focus. Tilmon has entered each of the past three seasons talking about not getting derailed by a foul call or mistake, but this offseason, Martin has noticed a concrete difference. He paid Tilmon a compliment by saying he looks like an old-school senior.

“You know, when I played in college, you knew that guy was a senior, because of how he looked and how he talks and how he moves,” Martin said. “And that says a lot about the wisdom and the knowledge that he’s gained over time.”

Perhaps the highest praise for Tilmon came from Pinson, who also declared for the NBA Draft before opting to return to school during the offseason. Pinson noted Tilmon’s improved conditioning, but said the biggest difference he’s noticed has been the big man’s communication and leadership.

“I see him running the floor, setting screens, making smart plays,” Pinson said of Tilmon. “If he sees anything going wrong or if he sees an opening for anything, he corrects it and lets the guards know. His communication is way better, and he runs the floor, he creates a lot of opportunities for other people. … Him just growing and maturing and knowing that he’s a leader and a senior, he has to do all the small things for us to win big like we want to, and he’s just realizing all those things, and it’s kind of clicking in practice, and you see it.”

-- Martin praised both Pinson and Tilmon for their offseason development, but he picked a less-heralded player as the most-improved member of the team: redshirt sophomore Parker Braun. Braun joined the Tigers as a walk-on prior to the 2018-19 season but redshirted that year. He played sparingly a season ago but showed some flashes of his potential, including a six-point, seven-rebound, four-block performance in a win over Ole Miss. Martin said Braun has added some weight to his 6-foot-8 frame and showed consistency shooting from the perimeter.

“His body’s filled out, he’s been impressive knocking the three-ball down, so he would probably be the one guy I’d say that’s stood out the most in comparison to where he was,” Martin said.

-- Health has been the biggest bugaboo for the entire Missouri team during Martin’s tenure, but particularly Mark Smith. Smith, who has led the Tigers in three-point shooting each of the past two seasons, has missed 20 games across the past two seasons due to injuries to his foot and back. But Smith said he’s back to 100 percent and has added some explosiveness to his game during the offseason.

“I feel great right now,” he said. “My body’s feeling good. I have no injuries. My back’s good, my ankles good. My game, I really just added being able to get to the basket a lot better and my ball-handling. Feel like coach can trust me to make decisions more, and I’m handling the ball a lot more.”

-- Martin said he used the downtime provided by COVID-19 to visit with NBA personnel and reflect on how he can improve his system. The biggest team-wide emphasis during the offseason, he said, has been shooting better from behind the three-point arc. Missouri shot just 29.7 percent from long range last season, which ranked 329th out of 353 Division I teams. Other focuses include improving ball security and cutting down on fouls.

“The best thing is to make open threes,” Martin said. “You want to be able to make open threes. You want to minimize your pull-ups, because everybody’s not a pull-up shooter. We might have three guys that are legitimate pull-up shooters. You want to limit your turnovers. You want to play defense at a high level without fouling, because as we watch film, we took momentum from ourselves when we had fouls. … So just really, for our team, just the sound things, taking care of the basketball, sharing the basketball, playing as hard as you can play, and just work on your individual game, work on your individual skill.”