After one year at Missouri, K.J. Santos has put his name in the transfer portal, a team spokesman confirmed on Friday afternoon.
The 6-foot-7 forward played his freshman season at Illinois-Chicago, but transferred and went the junior college route. Despite not playing in juco, Santos signed with Missouri in the 2018 recruiting class.
Santos battled a foot injury when he arrived on campus. He appeared in just 19 games, starting once. He averaged just 1.3 points and 1.9 rebounds per game in a little over 12 minutes of action per contest.
Santos' departure leaves Missouri with two open scholarships as of right now. One more is expected to open up with Jontay Porter declaring for the NBA Draft. Porter has not made that move publicly, but the deadline to declare is April 21st. Cuonzo Martin said on Thursday that Porter had sent his information to the NBA and should receive his feedback shortly.
Walk-on Parker Braun is also a strong candidate to receive a scholarship.
"I think we're close to that. I think he's a guy that we feel like has earned that," Martin said on the PowerMizzou.com Podcast this week. "We always want to make sure, obviously we still have enough time here in the next month or so to divvy out scholarships. But I think he's a guy, I think he's earned that right and we'll continue to sit down and talk with him about that."
Assuming both of those moves happen, Missouri would have two open spots for this class. The Tigers are currently hosting Duquesne transfer Eric Williams Jr. on a visit. The 6-foot-6 Williams averaged 14 points and 7.6 rebounds as a sophomore last season. He would have to sit out next year unless he were to receive a waiver. It was reported on Friday morning that Williams would visit Oregon next week.
The Tigers may not fill all the necessary spots. Martin indicated on Thursday that he isn't going to use all 13 scholarships just because he has them.
"You're talking 13 scholarship players so those last three guys are guys that are young or guys that maybe need to redshirt or guys that's injured," he said. "But you have to be careful when you get 13 guys on scholarship and make them understand everybody's not going to play so you have to be happy in your role and you have to grow into this role if you want to be a part of the team. I've gone a couple years where we've had 12 guys on scholarship, not intentionally, but I just told our guys, let's not bring a guy in just to have him in because often times if you haven't built a relationship he'll probably be over after the season's over."
