Interesting article from Matter on the STL Post-Dispatch. Bolded is the interesting (
) part.
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colle...74236d9d0.html
COLUMBIA, Mo. • I visited with Mizzou basketball coach Kim Anderson and assistant coach Rob Fulford on Wednesday to discuss a few topics, including incoming freshman point guard Terrence Phillips, who you’ll read about in Friday’s Post-Dispatch. They hit on some other subjects, too.
• First off, Kim and his wife Melissa have taken over as hosts of an annual charity drive here in Columbia, Tigers on the Prowl. You can read more about it here. You’ve seen the giant fiberglass Tigers around Columbia in years past. You’ll see them again this summer.
• On Tuesday, Anderson signed his sixth player for the 2015 class, K.J. Walton, a 6-3 guard from Indiana. With one final scholarship to offer, Anderson said the coaching staff favored targeting another backcourt scorer instead of a post player even though the roster is otherwise more guard heavy.
“He can score,” Anderson said. “He’s a good athlete and is a really well coached kid. He comes from a really good program. He’s really got the opportunity to be a good defender. What he does is helps us in an area where we struggled: scoring.”
(In case you’ve wiped the 2014-15 season from your memory, the Tigers averaged just 60.5 points per game, which ranked No. 321 out of 351 Division I teams.)
Fulford was Walton’s primary recruiter. He believes Walton can be an impact player this year, and along with fellow newcomers Phillips, Martavian Payne and Cullen VanLeer, Fulford expects the Tigers to have a deeper and more dynamic set of options on the perimeter.
Fulford, who came to Mizzou from Huntington Prep, the program he founded in West Virginia, has an interesting perspective on MU’s remodeled backcourt and its potential.
“The biggest adjustment I saw coming from what I’d call the elite high school or prep school level to college was everybody knows what you’re running (at the Division I level),” Fulford said. “We didn’t have fancy bells and whistles with video. My scouting reports at Huntington we either saw teams in person or went off stat sheets. You didn’t have the equipment. But what I noticed most last year, from a game plan standpoint and personnel, you better have some guys who can go get it — because otherwise your stuff doesn’t work.
“We know exactly what Kentucky runs. But stopping it is another story. When your stuff breaks down and you just need to get a bucket, we didn’t have enough guys to go do that. When we were recruiting that was a main focus: We’ve got to get guys who can go get theirs.”
Which leads to the new guards …
“Terrence is a guy who can go get it. He can create,” Fulford said. “Martavian can go get it. Cullen is very different, but when those guys go get it, he’s not missing that jump shot. With K.J., that’s what he does. He gets to the basket. He scores. He’s very physical. He’s got a college-ready body. He’s been in Indiana, which from a high school basketball standpoint, it doesn’t get much better. He’s been coached. He knows how to play. He’s got an extremely high IQ. He’s got a lot of depth on the perimeter that we just didn’t have last year.”
• What does that mean for Mizzou’s rotation next year? The Tigers have five bigs on board: Ryan Rosburg, Jakeenan Gant, D’Angelo Allen and newcomers Russell Woods and Kevin Puryear. (FYI, the coaches refer to Woods as Russ.) Will Anderson have to use some smaller lineup combinations?
“We will,” he said. “We’re going to have to look at how we play, whether we play with four guards. We’re going to probably be smaller. This summer’s going to be key. Jakeenan Gant has to get stronger. D’Angelo Allen has to get stronger. Kevin Puryear has to continue to get stronger. He’s a pretty strong kid anyway. If there’s an area where you get to the end (of recruiting) you say, ‘Do you take K.J. or do you take a big guy?’ I think we took K.J. because we thought he could add a lot from a scoring standpoint.”
• Again, I’ll touch on Phillips more in Friday’s paper, but a quick quote. I asked both Anderson and Fulford if the point guard can become Mizzou’s leader as a freshman. Fulford cut me off before I could finish my question.
“No question,” he said. “He’s going to have ups and downs like every freshman, but the one thing with Terrence, his personality will take over a room. It’ll take over the team. Whether he’s playing five minutes or 35 minutes he’s still going to be the same kid. His personality will really, really help mesh guys together. He’s just one of those kids you want around. And it helps that he’s a really good basketball player.”
• With a smaller lineup, does that mean Anderson will have to get away from his preferred high-low offensive system? Most likely.
We “probably won’t use it,” he said. “We’re going to look at things this summer, which is good that we’ll have the opportunity to do more. The guys coming back will know what we do and what we’ve done. You’ve got to be willing to change, but you also just spent 12 months … teaching an offense to guys. Now you’re going to throw that out the window (if you change systems). It would basically be like me riding in here again and starting over. The advantage of having freshmen is they become sophomores. I’m not looking to make wholesale changes because then they’re freshmen again except that they’re a year older. … Sure, different offenses are better for different teams, but it’s usually not the offense. It’s usually how you execute the offense or defense. Obviously, certain parts make certain offenses look better. But it’s usually the players, not the (system.) The offense we’re running, I didn’t make it up. So it’s not like I’m the only guy who ever ran it. You’ve just got to be able to execute. Having seven guys coming back, you don’t want to throw it out the window.”
• Which leads to a natural question. At this point, does he expect his seven returning players to return? Rosburg, Gant, Allen, Wes Clark, Montaque Gill-Caesar, Namon Wright and Tramaine Isabell. As of now, yes.
“We’ve had numerous discussions with every guy,” Anderson said. “Right now I feel good. Again, I’m also not naïve enough to know there’s always people getting in kids’ ears. I think the guys have something to prove, that they are going to be a year older and they’ll be better. Next year is going to be a challenge, too, because we’re going to be young, but hopefully we’re going to be better. I feel good now.”
But what happened to Johnathan Williams III? Anderson said he was caught off guard by his decision to transfer because after the season Williams said he was committed to returning for his junior season.
“But I wasn’t shocked,” he said. “Maybe a little surprised because we talked before he went to spring break and he was good. And when he came back he decided (to transfer). I don’t know what happened in the meantime.”
Williams has yet to announce where he’ll play next. Reports have linked him to Georgetown, Gonzaga and SMU, with Kansas showing some interest, too.
• Of Anderson’s seven returning players, Fulford knows Gill-Caesar the best. He was his coach at Huntington Prep before they both came to Mizzou. For the first few weeks of the season, Gill-Caesar looked like Mizzou’s best freshman since Linas Kleiza but then never recovered from a back injury suffered against Illinois. After the season, his name often came up in transfer rumors. Fulford shed some light on Gill-Caesar and his state of mind.
“Teki’s going to get healthy,” Fulford said. “He had that fall against Illinois and went downhill from there. It wasn’t that he wasn’t trying, but when we got in league play he was having back problems from the Illinois game and just never got healthy. I told him, ‘You kind of look like a 35-year-old guy at the Y playing.’ He was so stiff. He just wasn’t playing fluid.
“We get him back healthy. Then you’ve got Namon. You’ve got Cullen. You’ve got Martavian and K.J. You can play them in different roles and there’s a lot more that we can throw at people.”
“But Teki was frustrated,” he continued. “It was the first time anybody (on the team) experienced losing like that. There was a lot of frustration. Most of his was he wasn’t healthy. It affected him. It affected his mentality. He couldn’t prepare like he wanted to prepare because he was day to day most of the time. If we can get him back in midseason form — now, we’re not naïve enough to think he was going to blast through the SEC averaging 15 points a game — but I don’t think he would have dropped to 6 if he would have been healthy.
“Now, he’s ready. I’ve probably had that question asked 100 times. ‘I hear Teki’s leaving.’ He was just frustrated, like everyone else was. We’ve just got to get him healthy. That’s the most important part for him, so his mindset gets right. I’ve seen him for three years now, and I know what he’s capable of and I know what he’s not capable of. Once we started losing and he got hurt, his personality changed. He wasn’t frustrated any more than anyone else was, but it was the first taste of losing any of us had experienced.”
• After signing five players last year and six this year, Anderson’s staff can start targeting players in future classes. They’ve already offered scholarships to several recruits in the 2017 and 2018 classes.
“You’re looking at not only next year but you’re looking down the line because we finally are getting close to caught up in recruiting 2017 and 2018 guys, whereas a year ago we weren’t,” Anderson said. “We were behind. Now we’re finally getting caught up to where we’re actually recruiting two, three years ahead of time like everyone else.”
“Six is pretty many (for one class),” he said. “Next year we should get out of that. We only have one senior (Rosburg). Obviously in college basketball there’s attrition. We’ll see how that plays out. (Signing) six or five, that’s Central Missouri. We did 10 my last year. That’s not good consistently because you’re incorporating so many new guys it’s just hard to get that done.”
• After a three-week break, the players will report back to Columbia in early June and get started on offseason workouts. Last year Anderson focused almost exclusively on defensive drills. That will change this summer.
“I really think we’re going to spend more time on individual skill stuff offensively,” he said. “We’re still going to (work on defense). We spent a lot of time in the spring working on individual skill development, not only guards but bigs. I think that’s going to be really important. We’re still going to work on team stuff and defense, but we’re also going to work a lot of offensive individual stuff. Because that’s what we need.”