Over the next few weeks, PowerMizzou.com will take a look back at the season for each of the Tigers’ rotational players.
Noah Carter was a hot commodity when he hit the transfer portal last offseason after earning All-Missouri Valley Conference Second Team honors last offseason while playing for Northern Iowa. Numerous high-major programs reached out to the 6-foot-6 forward — Carter settled on a top five of Arkansas, Florida, Marquette, Mizzou and Virginia Tech. He ultimately committed to the Tigers on April 12, becoming one of 12 newcomers to join the roster, and was later voted a “team captain in training.”
The Dubuque, Iowa native demonstrated his value early on. Carter scored eight points and pulled down six rebounds in his debut with Missouri, a 97-91 win over Southern Indiana while also shooting 0-4 from the 3-point line. Head coach Dennis Gates said after the game that Carter “is not an 0-4 shooter.” Carter proved Gates right in the team’s next game, going 6-9 from beyond the arc and dropping a season-high 28 points in a 92-85 win against Penn.
Carter’s play ebbed and flowed over the course of the season. He started in the first 10 games of the year, producing multiple double-digit outings. In a road game against Wichita State, senior forward Kobe Brown recommended that Gates sit him during crunch time — Carter stepped up and led the Tigers with 20 points in an 88-84 overtime victory. But after Mizzou suffered its first loss to Kansas, Carter began coming off the bench, with junior forward Ronnie DeGray III replacing him in the starting lineup.
The forward went through a few stints of being inserted back into the starting five only to later be taken out, struggling to find a consistent role. It seemingly affected his play throughout Mizzou’s conference slate, as Carter averaged just 8.9 points and 3.6 rebounds against SEC opponents during the regular season. While he was a solid shooter from deep, he was significantly better from above the break than he was in the corners. According to CBB Analytics, Carter made just four of his 20 tries from the corners while shooting 34.7% from everywhere else along the perimeter.
Gates also felt like Carter became a little too infatuated with his outside game and neglected his skills in the post. Per KenPom, Carter ranked 56th in the country shooting 65.6% on 2-pointers. According to CBB Analytics, Carter sank 77.8% of his looks at the rim, which ranked in the 93rd percentile of the nation’s forwards.
Carter began embracing his touch inside more later in the year and it helped him find his footing down the final stretch of the season. He scored 10 or more points in seven of his last eight games, two coming in the SEC tournament and another two coming the NCAA tournament, while shooting 57.6% from the field and 41.9% from 3.
“I think sometimes I've gotten away from playing the way that I've played my entire career, just being able to go inside and outside, be able to hit 3s and go play in the post,” Carter said after he scored 13 points in a win over LSU. “So I'm just getting back to what I'm doing and, you know, this team's clicking really well right now. So we're firing on all cylinders, we know we're tough to beat.”
Carter finished the season averaging 9.6 points, 4.0 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game and will be an important piece of the team’s frontcourt next year — he announced on April 5 he’ll return to Missouri next season for his final year of eligibility.
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