Things got just a little bit more complicated yesterday.
Or maybe less complicated. There’s still work to do, but Mark Mitchell decommitted from Kentucky and enrolled at Missouri yesterday.
The move is good news for Missouri, and bad news for Kentucky, a conference rival. But the elephant in the room is Mark still isn’t fully eligible according to the NCAA. He has to challenge NCAA rules in court, and win, to play a fifth year.
Mitchell’s case to play another season is straightforward. His case to play this
season at Kentucky wasn’t straightforward. It all stems from the fact that Mitchell never entered the transfer portal when it was open, and the SEC has a rule which states you can’t transfer to another SEC school if you didn’t enter the portal before a specific deadline. So when Mark’s lawyer convinced the Judge to open the portal so Mark could enter, he was always only going to be able to play at Missouri or somewhere outside the SEC.
In order for Mitchell’s lawyer to prove he was being harmed, he would have to prove the SEC was preventing him from being paid. Mitchell and Kentucky were more than welcome to spend the next year together, but if they were to play him, the school and athletic program would be the parties harmed… by rules they voted for.
With reality setting in, Mitchell and his camp made the prudent move. They rekindled talks with Missouri and figured out how to move forward together.
Multiple things are true here. Mark loved his time at Missouri. Kentucky was offering him a lot of money. He would have been happy playing another year at Mizzou, he would have done well at Kentucky. I think we can take things too far with media pushes, I’ve seen both personalities like Jeff Goodman say all things being equal he thinks Mark would have preferred to be at Kentucky. We’ve seen Matt Norlander report someone told him Mark’s “heart was always with Missouri.” Comments right up with calling Kentucky a dream school, after he originally committed a week and a half ago.
Maybe we all just need to be quiet about this stuff for a while. You don’t need to win the news cycle and hype up a bunch of fans.
We can talk like adults about this. Mark had a chance to make a lot of money at Kentucky. So things were never equal. But if your goal is to play, and I don’t think UK was going to pay Mark as much to not play basketball, the move to Lexington made little sense.
There’s still an uphill battle to get him eligible. But Mark Mitchell being added to the roster is a big deal for the Tigers. Adding an All SEC level forward to go along with Jason Crowe, Jr. gives Dennis Gates all kinds of toys to play with on the offensive end. It also clouds the roster situation.
You read that right, Mizzou is technically over the roster limit by a spot. Technically!
But as we told you on the podcast many times… uh, don’t worry about it. Matt Norlander reported yesterday what we always knew, there’s room if you need it. Missouri has the flexibility with a spot or two if they need it. And they might, if you believe some rumors.
So the roster is loaded. There are a lot of forwards. Mark Mitchell is your starting 4, as long as he’s eligible.
What he does is lessens the impact needed from Toni Bryant, or even Bryson Tiller. The front court is crowded. This graphic isn’t perfect, but go with it.
- Posts: Bryson Tiller, Jaylen Carey, Trent Burns, Luke Northweather,
- CFs: Mark Mitchell, Toni Bryant, Nicholas Randall,
- Wings: Trent Pierce, Jamier Jones, Aidan Chronister, Annor Boateng, Cord Stansberry
- CGs: Kennard Davis, Jamal Crawford
- PGs: Jason Crowe, Jr, Aaron Rowe
We’ll have plenty of time to fully preview the Tigers. But the roster is good. Before Mitchell, I thought Mizzou might be a dark horse for a second weekend run in the NCAA Tournament. With Mitchell, I think that should be the expectation. The composition has the size and athleticism to be elite on the glass, and really good defensively. Gates has been great at crafting competent offenses at least. Put those things together and you have no excuses.
