From modest beginnings came magical things. Inside a little gymnasium on the edge of campus, a few young men formed a team and founded a tradition that would provide a century's worth of thrills. The rich history of Missouri Tigers basketball begins with them, players who toiled for little more than the pride of their school and a love of the game, but whose efforts would come to mean more than they could ever have imagined.

Though the first Missouri basketball team was formed in Columbia, its seeds were planted 235 miles to the southwest, where Hezekiah "Zeke" Henley, Carl "Curly" Ristine, and John Gardner were teammates on the Joplin YMCA squad. When the freshmen arrived on Mizzou's campus in 1906, they persuaded Clark Hetherington, the university's first athletics director, to sanction a men's basketball team, which would be coached by Isadore Anderson, a graduate student and former Tiger football player who had briefly played in a Kansas City basketball league at the turn of the century. Joined by fellow Joplinites William Driver, William Stava, Albert Moore, and Frank "Pete" Burress and by Fred Bernet (who had played at St. Louis Central High), they became the first men to represent the University of Missouri on the hardwood.

First men, not first students. In 1907 basketball was a minor sport, and most of the hale and hearty Missourians who thought of the game at all considered it a feminine pursuit. Women had been playing basketball at the University of Missouri, or Missouri State University, as it was also known, since 1898. But the game that would be played by men throughout the heartland was anything but ladylike.

By 1906 two sets of rules had evolved. The YMCA game was pure finesse, with prohibitions on physical contact and dribbling; teams moved the ball solely by the pass. But the college game was rough and tumble, often played by men like Ristine and Driver, fresh off the football field. In those primordial days of collegiate hoops, players could rack up a limitless number of personal fouls without disqualification, and they did.

Though several of the Tigers were basketball veterans, they were new to this sort of organized violence, and they had little time to acclimate to it. After a mere week of "intensive limbering up exercises," the inaugural edition of the Missouri Tigers debuted on January 12, 1907, at state-of-the-art Rothwell Gymnasium, whose construction had been completed just months before. Their opponents were the young men of Central College in Fayette, Missouri.

Izzy Anderson settled on a lineup of Henley, Ristine, Bernet, Driver, and Gardner, which could hardly have been more dominant that first day. The Tigers trounced their overmatched opponents 65–5, still one of the most lopsided scores in school history.

Within the starting five, Zeke Henley and Curly Ristine emerged as stars. Ristine typically played center with Henley (a rare one-handed shooter) at forward in the primitive scheme that resembled more modern hockey and soccer formations. For-wards stayed forward and concentrated on offense. Guards stayed back and protected the goal. And the center played in between, forming the link between offense and defense. In the Missouri scheme, Henley and Ristine scored the overwhelming majority of the points, both from the field and by taking turns as the Tigers' designated free throw shooter.

Despite the showing in their first game, the Tigers stumbled early in the season. After the first rousing victory, Missouri lost to Washington University, Kansas City Athletic Club, and Baker University, though Ristine grabbed the attention of the Kansas City press by sinking a game-high seven field goals against KCAC ("the only player [in the game] who did anything exceptional," they said). But from there, the Tigers proved potent. Though a pair of losses was mixed in, they reeled off a series of impressive wins, including a 43–18 romp over Warrensburg Normal and a 66–6 demolition of the Fort Riley team. In fact, the Tigers were good enough to merit consideration for a mythical title in their first season of play.

In this time before conference affiliations and national collegiate tournaments, the lone title to play for was that of unofficial state champions. In their first season, the Tigers staked a claim to that title, or at least a share of it. They won five of eight against in-state competition, and in the season's home stretch the Tigers defeated Washington University, Kansas City Athletic Club (a 46–26 thrashing), and Missouri Athletic Club, the only Show Me squads to defeat them during their inaugural campaign.

More than just statewide bragging rights were at stake that first season. The Tigers also battled a new and fierce rival. Though intercollegiate athletics were in their relative infancy, the University of Missouri already had become embroiled in a heated rivalry with the University of Kansas in track and especially football. The Tigers and Jayhawks first met on the gridiron on Halloween 1891, establishing one of the nation's longest-running series. Seven weeks after that first football game, in a gymnasium half a continent away, a gentleman named James Naismith presided over the first game of basketball, an activity he conjured up at the Springfield, Massachusetts, YMCA. Seven years after that, Naismith accepted a faculty appointment at the University of Kansas and organized the first Jayhawk basketball team. His ninth and last season as KU's coach coincided with Missouri's first with a basketball team. And in that final season, Missouri was Naismith's final opponent.

The Jayhawks invaded Columbia for a pair of games. As had been the case all year, Henley and Ristine carried the offense. The first contest, close throughout, was tied late in the game. But a Missouri field goal followed by a Ristine free throw capped a 34–31 Tiger triumph, a game in which Missouri's two stars combined for thirty points. Naismith's swan song came the next day. Again, it was close—for a while. The Tigers led 10–7 at halftime. But the second half, like Missouri's season, belonged to Henley and Ristine. Zeke scored sixteen, and Curly added nine in the Tigers' 34–12 victory. The win left Missouri 2–0 all-time against the game's inventor and helped launch one of the fiercest rivalries in all of sports.