The evolution of Mizzou basketball recruiting
Much has been made of the wild west nature of the transfer portal this year. It’s true in football, too, but college basketball is where most of the offseason portal angst was directed. Five Missouri players transferred out (two had already graduated anyway) and four new players transferred in. That number could still grow before the start of the season.
“We got a spot left,” Cuonzo Martin said last week. “We’re not done. I can say we’re not done. We’re still working on it, but we’re not done yet.”
The question that reigns supreme across college sports this summer is simple: Is this a one-time exception or the new normal?
The COVID-19 pandemic and a blanket free year of eligibility that is a mess creating roster management headaches across the country has certainly intensified the transfer movement. So has the decision to give players wanting to find a new home a one-time waiver where they do not have to sit out when moving schools. So, yes, this year might be different than any year before or after. Then again…
"Cuonzo has really embraced the transfer portal so that it can be really good for us,” Director of Athletics Jim Sterk told Dave Matter of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this week. “The number of high school kids that he’s going to recruit may be reduced.
“(The portal is) almost like the junior college route of the old days, if you will. It could be like that. I don’t know if it’ll slow down.”
Martin certainly isn’t indicating an intent to move away from it.
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“The landscape has changed,” he said. “You can get a transfer as opposed to a high school guy. We’ll recruit, we don’t have a specific (number) we need to get this many. You recruit the guys that fit your program, but I don’t think you have to be gangbusters, run out the door to recruit a guy when you never know two years down the road if that will be the case.”
Missouri did sign five high school prospects in the Class of 2021, so it’s not like the Tigers are going to completely ignore that aspect going forward. They’ve already hosted a couple of 2022 official visitors who are in high school and are recruiting plenty of traditional four-year (in theory, at least) players. But transfers are going to continue to be an annual thing, not just at Mizzou, but across the country.
The Tigers have shown plenty of success in finding the right ones. It started, really, with Frank Haith. Left with a bare cupboard when Mike Anderson left for Arkansas, Haith found himself having to rebuild a roster after his first season. Haith used a seven-man rotation that year. Five of them were seniors and the one junior would be out of the program without ever playing for Mizzou again. So Haith brought in a series of transfers that at the time was seen as replacing one band-aid with another but in reality was a plan ahead of its time.
The Tigers rented Alex Oriakhi for a year, then brought in Keion Bell, Earnest Ross, Jabari Brown and Jordan Clarkson as traditional sit-a-year transfers. Three of the five were excellent for Mizzou and all five were regular starters. Haith left for Tulsa and three years later, Missouri hired Martin to revive a program that had been buried and had three seasons of dirt—to the tune of a 27-68 cumulative record—shoveled on top of the grave.
In year one, Martin landed Canisius graduate transfer Kassius Robertson. All Robertson did was lead the Tigers back to the NCAA Tournament with a team-high 16.3 points per game in an all-SEC season. The following year, Illinois castoff Mark Smith averaged 11.3 points for Missouri after transferring in as a sophomore. Evansville transfer Dru Smith was sitting out that season and then averaged 13 points, four rebounds, four assists and two steals over two full seasons for the Tigers, taking Mizzou back to the NCAA Tournament as a senior in 2020-21.
In other words, Martin knows what he’s looking for when he hits the transfer market, especially when he looks at mid-major players.
“The obvious part for me is he a good guy? Do you like being around him? Does he have a work ethic?” Martin said. “You saw Kassius, Dru Smith, the work ethic. Then with the guys that are coming in now, the transfers, those guys are able to make individual plays, they can make a shot and I think they have good size too. I think all those things are very helpful. We spent a lot of time (talking to) grassroots coaches, parents, high school coaches, anybody we could find that knows a guy because you’re bringing them into a situation and you want to make it work.”
In a year in which recruiting looked different than it ever had due to the pandemic, Martin said Missouri probably did more homework and knew players better than it ever had before.
“We spend so much time talking to them, especially phone calls and zoom calls, we probably spent more time than ever building that relationship, understanding what they’re coming into,” Martin said. “I think that’s been helpful not only with the guys but also the parents.”
And transfers have another benefit: You don’t have to hit AAU tournaments across the country week after week after week to see them. You simply have to watch college basketball and load up some video. Coaches can get a first-hand look at how transfers have already performed against college competition, rather than having to project what a high school player might be able to do when he jumps up a level and has to face players who are every bit as talented every single night.
“Anytime you can evaluate guys on this level, that’s a great visualization as far as studying film,” Martin said. “We have so much video coming in.”
Will the portal look like this every single season? Probably not. But it’s now a major part of college basketball recruiting. Coaches can either accept it and evolve or cling to the way they’ve done things for decades and be left behind.
Martin has made his choice.
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