The buzzer sounds at the end of a loss for nearly every basketball team in College Sports. The fun fact is a loss happens for good teams, bad teams, and everyone in between with the exception of a very few.
The buzzer sounded on Missouri’s season at around 11:30pm last Friday night.
From there Dennis Gates and his staff began the long slog of the offseason, and began preparing for the short spring of the transfer portal season.
The NCAA Transfer portal has transformed college sports, in many ways both
good and bad. But it’s a fact of life, and provides hope for nearly every program that whatever was achieved this past season, next year can be even better. With the right moves in the transfer portal!
But you can’t hit up the portal without knowing what you need, and you don’t know what you need if you don’t know what you have. So with the season wrapped, let’s take stock of what the Missouri program has, so we can then figure out what they need.
First, the updated roster count graphic:
A recap of the current scholarship/roster setup is each program gets 15 spots. Here’s how those spots are currently allocated and how many years of eligibility (based upon the existing 5 years to play 4 seasons format) each player has left.
Who’s Out of Eligibility
- Jacob Crews, Senior: 0 years left
- Mark Mitchell, Senior: 0 years left
- Jayden Stone, Senior: 0 years left
- Shawn Philips, Senior: 0 years left
- Jevon Porter, Senior: 0 years left
Who’s Still got Eligibility
- Trent Pierce, Junior: 1 year left
- Anthony Robinson II, Junior: 1 year left
- Sebastian Mack, Junior, 1 year left
- Luke Northweather, R-Junior: 1 year left
- T.O. Barrett, Sophomore: 2 years left
- Annor Boateng, Sophomore: 2 years left
- Trent Burns, R-Freshman: 3 years left
- Nicholas Randall, Freshman: 3 years left
- Aaron Rowe, Redshirt: 4 years left
Who’s coming in new?
- Jason Crowe, Jr. – 5-star combo guard
- Toni Bryant – 5-star combo forward
- Aidan Chronister – 4-star wing
That’s 12 players currently on scholarship for next season… for now. Obviously there’s a lot that can change with the portal opening soon, and with talented players coming in there’s a chance some combination of talented players will exit.
There’s also the case of Jevon Porter, who missed all of conference play with a leg injury. Porter was in the rotation, started the first 10 games, played in 12 games, and played double digit minutes in 11. Missouri has requested medical redshirts in the past, and I could see them attempting to use one in this case. But until we see confirmation, it’s probably safer to assume that he’ll be gone.
Projected Depth & Needs
This is by no means a perfect projection. But it’s the total list of players who are on the existing roster with eligibility remaining, and those who are signed on.
One thing we know is Jason Crowe, Jr. is going to play and play a lot. After that it mostly depends on how things shake out with the portal.
If you’re looking for roster speculation, I’m not going to do that here. There are 200 minutes to play in a basketball game, and there are 12 guys projected on the roster next year without any portal additions. Someone is going to be out of minutes. I don’t know who is going to think about leaving, but it’s often not hard to read some writing on the wall. And with the transfer rules, there’s no real repercussions for transferring.
I would think the areas of need are at the post position, since neither Trent Burns nor Luke Northweather have seized control of that position. They’re also likely looking for scoring, with Crowe you have a primary scorer but who is the secondary creator? Ant and TO took turns trying to be that guy and neither were able to do so consistently. Trent Pierce is a quality rotation player but that this point I think it’s unlikely he’s a secondary scorer, more he’s a floor spacer, and someone who can attack closeouts.
So there’s a chance the Tigers are looking for 2-3 proven rotational players, with at least one or two being starter level. The hope is Aaron Rowe is able to take on a rotational role next year, as can Nicholas Randall. I don’t know what they expect from Annor Boateng, but the injury likely means he’ll be around next year in some capacity. It would be a good sign if Aidan Chroninster is ready for minutes also.
There’s a 15 day window the portal will be open starting April 7th, the day after the National Championship game.
The transfer tracker will be ready and posted the moment there’s news.
