Ten for 10 in the SEC, No. 8: Mizzou opens Martin era with win over Iowa St
This fall will mark 10 years since Missouri announced a seismic change: The athletics department would leave the Big 12 conference and join the SEC. Missouri’s new home has brought the department increased revenue, which has helped bankroll improvements like the South Endzone football facility and new softball stadium. But for virtually every sport, the move has brought new challenges, as well — better competition and more pressure to spend to keep pace.
Over the next 10 weeks, we will be counting down Missouri’s top 10 athletics moments from its first decade as a member of the SEC (which is actually nine years of competition because it took a year for the change to take effect). Note that wrestling, which has spent the past nine years as a member of the Mid-American Conference and will rejoin the Big 12 next fall, wasn’t considered for inclusion since it didn’t compete in the SEC.
For our next entry, we look back to Nov. 10, 2017, opening night of the 2017-18 college basketball season.
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As the first of 15,061 fans made their way inside Mizzou Arena for the most anticipated Missouri basketball game in at least four seasons, Cuonzo Martin put the finishing touches on his Iowa State game plan. For the first time as the head coach of the Tigers, Martin did what he always does before games: wrote a list of notes and scouting report reminders on the whiteboard in Missouri’s locker room. Once he finished, Martin was approached by the driving force behind the sellout crowd, the reason a program that had won just 27 games over the previous three seasons had attracted national attention and received Top 25 votes entering the season: Michael Porter Jr.
I don’t think I can go tonight, Martin remembers the nation’s No. 1 recruit telling him. My leg is acting up.
Junior Kevin Puryear got the news shortly thereafter, going through pregame shootaround on the Mizzou Arena floor. Porter approached Puryear, slated to come off the bench for the Tigers after starting each of his first two seasons on campus, and told him to be ready to start.
“We were shooting before the game, and he comes up to me and he was like, ‘Kev, you’re going to have to start today,’” Puryear recalled. “And I was like, ‘What do you mean? What’s going on?’ And he said, ‘I can’t feel the (left) side of my body, something’s not right.’”
“I would be lying if I said there weren’t any nerves or anything with stepping up and coming off the bench. I had started plenty of games before that, so I would say it was more just the atmosphere and the hype that gave me butterflies a little bit.”
As it turned out, Porter did end up making his Missouri debut that night, and as a member of the starting lineup. By the time he told the trainers and coaches about the discomfort in his left leg, Martin had already submitted his lineup card with Porter listed as a starter, so he had no choice but to take the floor. When the public address announcer bellowed his name, the crowd inside Mizzou Arena — oblivious to Porter’s injury — responded with a roar unlike any noise that building had experienced since the Tigers left the Big 12 for the SEC following the 2011-12 season. A similar cheer reverberated through the arena a couple minutes later, when Porter rebounded a missed three-pointer and laid it in for his first points in a Missouri uniform, giving his team a 4-0 lead.
Then, just one minute and 40 seconds into the game, Porter left the floor, replaced by Puryear. He took a seat near the end of the Tiger bench and placed an ice pack on his left hip, sparking the injury speculation that would come to dominate Missouri’s season.
Those around the game realized something was wrong at different times. Junior guard Jordan Geist said he didn’t hear anything about Porter’s injury before the game — he didn’t find out about it until Porter exited the game so quickly. It took a few minutes before the SEC Network television broadcast got a shot of Porter holding the ice pack on his hip. Finally, official word emerged from a team spokesperson at some point during the game that Porter had “tweaked” his hip and was held out of the rest of the game as a precaution.
While questions about what, exactly, was wrong with Porter and how long he would be unable to play would come to take center stage over the next few months, that night, there was still a game to be played. And in another instance of foreshadowing, Missouri’s supporting cast proved effective without their headliner.
Fueled by the energy of the crowd, the Tigers started fast. They led 7-2, then 14-4, then 24-10. Geist and Puryear both noted that the environment inside Mizzou Arena was unlike anything they’d experienced to that point in their college careers.
“I was speechless,” Geist said. “I mean, it was just like what you dreamed of as a kid. You grew up and you wanted to play at a big-time school, you wanted to play in front of a big-time crowd, and we got to play in front of that, and it was so hard to describe because it was such an amazing feeling.”
“That was really a first for me, and that was really what I signed up for when I decided to come to Mizzou,” said Puryear.
While the sudden nature of Porter’s injury sparked confusion for those watching the game, looking back nearly four years later, Martin believes the timing might have actually benefited Missouri. That roster featured five newcomers and a new coaching staff, and as Puryear alluded to, it wasn’t as if the returners were accustomed to playing in front of massive crowds. Thus, opening the season in prime time against an Iowa State team that had won the Big 12 tournament and earned a 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament the year prior came with some nerves. Had the players had a couple days to ruminate on taking the floor without Porter, Martin believes they might have psyched themselves out. As it was, by the time most of them realized Porter was injured, the adrenaline of competition had kicked in.
“It’s one thing if, say, the day or two before, at practice, all of a sudden, Mike’s out,” Martin said. “... That would probably create a somber atmosphere for your guys, just because as your teammate, you go into the game, first game and all that, and who he is. But I think just because of how it happened, our guys didn’t have enough time to say ‘what happened?’ The game was going on. I think we got off to a great start and never let up.”
Key to Missouri never missing a beat after Porter’s exit was the team’s other newcomers. The evening that was supposed to serve as a coronation for Columbia’s most decorated high school prospect turned into a coming-out party for the rest of Martin’s first recruiting class.
Canisius graduate transfer Kassius Robertson, who would go on to earn first-team all-SEC honors, played a game-high 34 minutes, scoring 11 points and grabbing five rebounds. Freshman Jeremiah Tilmon, a top-50 prospect himself who had flown under the radar a bit due to the presence of Porter, scored 14 points and grabbed seven rebounds on 7-9 shooting. Porter’s younger brother Jontay Porter, who should have been starting his senior season of high school, showed flashes of his well-rounded game, finishing with five points, four rebounds, three assists and a block.
Martin attributes the quick success of the newcomers to the makeup of Missouri’s locker room. Robertson quickly emerged as the team’s hardest worker and a vocal leader. The other returning players, hungry to prove they belonged after some lean seasons, took notice and sought to match the amount of time Robertson spent in the gym. The crop of talented freshmen didn’t show up expecting anything to be handed to them. Put it all together and Martin had the hardest thing for every first-year coach to find: a positive team culture.
“I think really with the returning guys, it was hunger for success,” Martin said. “And those new guys, it was just feeding off the energy. And they were talented young guys, so just feeding off that. And putting that all together. But I don’t think you had any egos. I think even if Mike was able to play, I think guys were okay with Mike being Michael Porter Jr., because he was a talented guy, you can’t take away from that, and they were okay with that. So I think we had a group of guys, all they wanted to do was win.”
The star of the game, however, wasn’t a newcomer, but the player who had embraced the transition from two-year starter to reserve, Puryear. Even though he said he felt some butterflies upon learning he’d have to play in place of the star that had drawn the sellout crowd, his play didn’t show it. Puryear finished with team-highs in points (17) and rebounds (eight), making six of his seven field goal attempts.
“It’s not as if you’re bringing a freshman in that’s saying to themselves, I’m playing behind Michael Porter Jr., I might not play a lot,” Martin said of Puryear. “Here’s a guy that’s tested. So the transition was a smooth one, and it worked out well.”
Missouri led by double-digits for nearly the entire first half, taking a 14-point lead into the locker room. Iowa State made a brief run to start the second half, cutting the Tiger lead to as few as eight, but Missouri would respond with a 12-0 run to put the game away. The Tigers wound up cruising to a 74-59 victory.
In the following days, questions about Porter’s injury would come to overshadow Missouri’s win. The following weeks and months would bring even more drama, with the school announcing Porter would likely miss the remainder of the season after undergoing back surgery, only for Porter himself to post a cryptic message on his Instagram account suggesting he might be able to return to the court sooner. Meanwhile, two other freshmen, Blake Harris and CJ Roberts, opted to transfer midway through the season, and junior point guard Terrance Phillips was suspended and ultimately removed from the team due to a Title IX investigation.
But that win over Iowa State had a lasting impact on the players that would go on to lead Missouri to its first NCAA Tournament berth since 2013. The atmosphere proved that the fanbase was still hungry for Missouri to play meaningful basketball, while the team’s performance proved that the roster was more than just Porter. The win gave the players a taste of success few had experienced before.
Highlighting Missouri’s decisive second-half spurt were Geist and Robertson knocking down three-pointers on consecutive possessions. Geist looks back on that shot as the moment he knew, after not being recruited by high-major schools, playing a season of junior college and suffering through an eight-win season in 2016-17, that he could play a meaningful role for a team with NCAA Tournament aspirations. He believes that win over Iowa State had a similar impact on the rest of the team: The players always understood that the roster had plenty of talent, but a group that had little to no experience winning at the college level suddenly saw for themselves how good they could be, and it pushed them to work even harder.
“I think we had that monkey on our backs,” Geist said. “It kind of gives you that extra sense of like, alright, we can actually do this and gives you that kind of relief that you don’t necessarily have to prove yourself any more. We just proved ourselves here that we can do it, and now we just have to keep this up, keep winning games.”
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