Missouri basketball down another player after Tuesday

Missouri basketball loses reserve freshman guard Mario McKinney Jr., who has decided to transfer.

The Missouri basketball roster is getting quite thin these days.

Mizzou lost its second player so far as guard Mario McKinney Jr. has decided to enter the transfer portal. McKinney spent the first semester with the Tigers, and will be able to play 3 1/2 years at his next school.

The Tigers were already down Jeremiah Tilmon for the foreseeable future. That takes away another area on the floor for this year’s Tigers team. Mizzou is down one big man for now and a guard.

Before Saturday’s win over Florida, the Tigers announced McKinney had been suspended from the team indefinitely. It sounded possible that this would happen after that news came about.

McKinney has taken to social media to talk about what has transpire this past week with coach Cuonzo Martin and the Missouri basketball team.

Dave Matter of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted in his article Tuesday that McKinney said he wasn’t told how many guards Mizzou had on the roster.

The Tigers’ roster numbers aren’t as low as they were in 2017-18, Martin’s first year coaching the team. He’s been through injuries and transfers before, and it’s something that Mizzou fans are used to by now. Missouri has 14 players on the roster right now, but with Tilmon out with a stress fracture, that number drops to 13.

We don’t know when Tilmon will be back, and that will be important for the rest of the year.

McKinney was a St. Louis recruit and one that people saw as a possible recruit who could bring more in-state ball players to CoMo. He played in seven games this season with an average of just more than eight minutes a contest.

The freshman averaged 2.6 points and 1.6 rebounds for Missouri. He was 5 of 20 from the field and 8 of 9 from the free-throw line.