Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning
1) We feel like the basketball roster is likely complete. The Tigers added Ronnie DeGray last week and while they do have another spot left, it's our guess that spot doesn't get filled. The reason is simple: There's not a ton out there (and there's almost nothing out there that has previously been tied to Mizzou in any way). I know the argument is going to be "BUT THE ONLY GUYS WE HAVE WHO ARE BIGGER THAN 6-7 ARE A GUY WHO PLAYED 26 MINUTES LAST YEAR AND A FRESHMAN COMING OFF A TORN ACL."
That's true. It's also true that conventional big men are becoming less and less common in college basketball. Many have been wanting Cuonzo Martin to fully embrace the smaller, faster style of play the last few years. He did to an extent, but not completely because he had Jeremiah Tilmon on his roster, which not a lot of teams have these days. They're going to play differently than they have the last few years. At the same time, they're going to play much more similarly to the way a lot of more modern offensive teams are playing. For every mismatch it might cause you on the defensive end, it can cause the other team a mismatch as well.
Now that we've said all of this, he'll probably add a 6-11 transfer tomorrow.
2) The key is whether this program is overall moving in the right direction. It's likely we won't have an immediate answer to that this year, but one way to take a look is to compare this year's roster to last year's. I'm going to try to do that.Going into last season, I said I thought the upside for the team was a 6 or a 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament, a team that if things fell right could win a couple of games and make the Sweet 16. It turned out, that was pretty accurate. Missouri fell a little bit short of that, but not by a ton. Here was last year's roster:
SENIORS: Jeremiah Tilmon, Mitchell Smith, Dru Smith, Mark Smith, Drew Buggs
JUNIORS: Javon Pickett, Torrence Watson, Ed Chang, Xavier Pinson
SOPHOMORES: Kobe Brown, Parker Braun
FRESHMEN: Jordan Wilmore
Here is this year's:
SENIORS: Javon Pickett
JUNIORS: Kobe Brown, Amari Davis, DaJuan Gordon, Boogie Coleman
SOPHOMORES: Jordan Wilmore, Ronnie DeGray
FRESHMEN: Yaya Keita, Sean Durugordon, Anton Brookshire, Kaleb Brown, Trevon Brazile
So let's take the optimistic path: Pickett and Brown take steps forward next year. Coleman gives you a half step less than Dru Smith did, Gordon gives you a half step above what Mark Smith did, Amari Davis is somewhere in the neighborhood of Xavier Pinson (highs not as high, lows not as low). Wilmore is better than he was last year, Keita gives you 10-15 minutes a game and two of the other four freshmen are legitimate contributors.
If ALL of that happens, you could have a team that's somewhere close to last year's in my opinion. The one thing you haven't replaced is Tilmon (sorry, but as a freshman, Tilmon started all 33 games and averaged almost 20 minutes, while Wilmore was on the floor for 12 minutes total in SEC play). Some of that loss is mitigated because of the way they'll probably play, but running through the roster, I think the upside is you're looking at a team that is overall similar to what last year's team would have been if Tilmon wasn't on it.
So what's that mean? I'd say you're looking at a team that will be picked 10th or 11th in the SEC and it will be a pretty significant surprise if it's in the NCAA Tournament. A more realistic goal for next season is an NIT team. If that happens, there's reason for optimism. If they fall short of that, it's concerning.
3) Of course, you're not going to make a final judgment on the program based solely on next season.
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