The Missouri Tigers have shared the spotlight with the likes of Carolina, Duke, and Kentucky, among others, this recruiting season. Truman’s Tales offers updates on Kevin Knox, Jontay Porter, and Jeremiah Robinson-Earl.
There’s no denying that Missouri basketball is in rebuild mode. Had it no been for the brilliance of head coach Cuonzo Martin offering an assistant coaching job to Michael Porter, Sr., Tigers fans would more than likely be elbows-deep in the midst of rebuilding hell.
Once Michael Porter, Sr. accepted Martin’s offer to return to Columbia, Martin’s master plan slowly began to fall into place. The No. 1 recruit, Michael Porter, Jr. withdrew his commitment to Washington, and committed to play for Missouri.
While Missouri will return a number of scholarship athletes in 2017, there was no way that squad, as it stood, was going to offer Mizzou any chance of sniffing the NCAA Tournament, let alone an invitation to the NIT, with a repeat of last year’s performance.
Coach Martin’s career body of work shows consistency in constructing competitive programs, even from the unlikeliest of recruits. Any team that Martin has had his hand in developing has evolved into playoff contenders.
For the most part, the Missouri faithful did not expect the windfall of talent that has collected in Columbia. Most, myself included, expected an average season for a program that was destined to experience some amount of growing pains.
Anyone would have offered a hearty laugh, if back in February, and following an 8-24 campaign, that playoffs and championships next year were uttered in the same sentence. It was the farthest belief from our collective minds.
Now here we are, on the edge of what realistically could be a championship season for Missouri Tigers basketball.