Three make up Andersons second class

Kim Anderson's second full recruiting class signed their National Letters of Intent on Wednesday. Mitchell Smith, Willie Jackson and Reed Nikko all signed to join Anderson's program next year.

Like every other coach in the country, Anderson is happy with what the Tigers got in the Class of 2016.



"The thing we're always looking for is young men who have been successful at their previous institutions and who will be great representatives of our university," Anderson said in a statement on Wednesday night. "All three of these young men are like that."

All three are three-star prospects. None are rated in the nation's top 150 by Rivals.com. It is a class, on paper, quite similar to Anderson's first: Players of high character who aren't going to blind anyone with stars.


"They've all demonstrated good work ethic and they demonstrated that in the recruiting process too," Anderson said on Tuesday. "Obviously you look for talent, skill, and you look for character. They've all demonstrated that. I think they're guys who, even though maybe they aren't the highest-rated guys, we try to do a good job of finding guys, evaluating guys that we can develop over a period of time. Sure you'd love to get the five-star guy, but you don't always get that person."


That quote was about his four freshmen in the 2015 class of Kevin Puryear, Cullen VanLeer, K.J. Walton and Terrence Phillips. The group--three of whom started Missouri's exhibition win over Missouri Western last Friday--makes its regular season debut against Wofford this Friday.

"All four of these guys have come in and created competition and brought some energy to our program and they're pretty good players too," Anderson said. "There's gonna be mistakes, there's gonna be times when maybe things don't go their way and how do they respond? Those four guys have been great. Almost every day of practice they've come in with that extra gear that we need that maybe a year ago we didn't always have."

Adding Nikko, Smith and Jackson to this group, Anderson will have completely remade the roster by the beginning of next season in a little more than two years. Jackson averaged 18 points, 14 rebounds and five assists per game as a junior at Garfield High in Cleveland. Smith put up 18 points and 7.6 rebounds as a junior at Arkansas' Van Buren High School. Nikko averaged 9.6 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.4 blocks for Maple Grove (MN).


The three signings would put Missouri on pace to have 14 scholarship players if everyone who is eligible to return did so next year. The NCAA limit in basketball is 13.

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