****Official 2017-2018 Missouri Tigers Basketball Thread****

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Back up in your ass with the resurrection. Follow the Cuonzo Martin era here.

Recruiting Commitments:

2017:
Michael Porter Jr., SF, *****, Gatorade National Player of the Year
CJ Roberts, PG, ****
Blake Harris, PG, ***/****
Jeremiah Tilmon, F/C, ****
Kassius Robertson, Grad Transfer
Jontay Porter (possible re-classification from Class of '18), ****

Departures: No one that matters
Returning Players: No one that matters

Overall class ranking: #6 nationally.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

Lulz at the Kimmay knob slobbing in that article. Tribal Elder write that?

[Jewish Rabbi]

Originally Posted by Pasta Giant Meatball

Lulz at the Kimmay knob slobbing in that article. Tribal Elder write that?

Mosbonian

[duncan_idaho]

Originally Posted by KChiefs1

I keep hoping he will transfer to Pitt State.



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That would be ideal, but he seems content to get zero PT and be able to tell people "I'm a Missouri basketball player."

I hope Kermit and his henchman, the one-balled wonder Jon Gilliam, fail at Pitt State.


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[Pitt Gorilla]

Have you heard of this kid? Jontay something...

Jontay Porter shines outside brother's shadow

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colle...ign=user-share

COLUMBIA, MO. • For the past few weeks Jontay Porter has emerged from the shadow of his older brother on basketball courts in Virginia, Indiana and Georgia. By being on his own, he’s perhaps proved he’s ready to join his brother on Missouri’s roster next season.

Jontay Porter, the 6-11 forward who committed to Mizzou last week, is no longer a sidekick on the Nike EYBL circuit. He’s become a force for MOKAN Elite, the AAU team that helped showcase Michael Porter Jr., the nation’s top-ranked recruit, who’s bound for Mizzou in the coming weeks. Jontay, now the anchor for MOKAN’s streamlined summer roster, is putting his talents on display against the nation’s top 2018 and 2019 recruits.

“I think his stock continues to rise because people are seeing him play without Michael and as a lead player,” MOKAN Elite coach Chris Neff said. “He’s awfully special.”

Unexpected departures from Chaminade’s Jadis White and Webster Groves’ Carte’Are Gordon right before the first EYBL session in Hampton Beach, Va., left MOKAN with only eight players, but Porter has powered the team to a 9-3 record heading into this weekend’s session in Los Angeles. Ranked the No. 10 recruit in the 2018 class by Rivals.com, Porter has posted averages among the best in the circuit: 18.1 points, 12.7 rebounds, 2.9 blocks and 2.4 assists. He’s shooting 46 percent overall and, especially impressive, 40 percent from 3-point range.

Porter is often labeled a stretch four, a power forward with the shooting range to stretch defenders out to the perimeter. Neff isn’t so sure.

“He’s a stretch five,” Neff said. “What that allows us and his future (team) is he defends fives and he forces the five matchup. Defending him is quite a bit different. He steps out and plays on the perimeter, and he’s a very good passer. He has the ability to post up inside, too. I see him doing more of that. I know the power forward position is probably the future for him, but he can play the five.”

For now, it’s still uncertain if Porter will reclassify and join his older brother on Mizzou’s roster for the upcoming season or play his senior year at Father Tolton High School, where he and Michael won the 2016 Class 3 state championship. Neff is convinced he’s ready for the college level.

“I don’t think there’s anything he can’t do physically,” Neff said. “He’s spent most of his life preparing for these opportunities. He’s been up against some pretty physical kids over the years and he tends to do well. He’s really intelligent in finding his space and using his body. And being lefthanded has its advantages, too.”

[KChiefs1]

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

Have you heard of this kid? Jontay something...

Jontay Porter shines outside brother's shadow

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colle...ign=user-share

COLUMBIA, MO. • For the past few weeks Jontay Porter has emerged from the shadow of his older brother on basketball courts in Virginia, Indiana and Georgia. By being on his own, he’s perhaps proved he’s ready to join his brother on Missouri’s roster next season.

Jontay Porter, the 6-11 forward who committed to Mizzou last week, is no longer a sidekick on the Nike EYBL circuit. He’s become a force for MOKAN Elite, the AAU team that helped showcase Michael Porter Jr., the nation’s top-ranked recruit, who’s bound for Mizzou in the coming weeks. Jontay, now the anchor for MOKAN’s streamlined summer roster, is putting his talents on display against the nation’s top 2018 and 2019 recruits.

“I think his stock continues to rise because people are seeing him play without Michael and as a lead player,” MOKAN Elite coach Chris Neff said. “He’s awfully special.”

Unexpected departures from Chaminade’s Jadis White and Webster Groves’ Carte’Are Gordon right before the first EYBL session in Hampton Beach, Va., left MOKAN with only eight players, but Porter has powered the team to a 9-3 record heading into this weekend’s session in Los Angeles. Ranked the No. 10 recruit in the 2018 class by Rivals.com, Porter has posted averages among the best in the circuit: 18.1 points, 12.7 rebounds, 2.9 blocks and 2.4 assists. He’s shooting 46 percent overall and, especially impressive, 40 percent from 3-point range.

Porter is often labeled a stretch four, a power forward with the shooting range to stretch defenders out to the perimeter. Neff isn’t so sure.

“He’s a stretch five,” Neff said. “What that allows us and his future (team) is he defends fives and he forces the five matchup. Defending him is quite a bit different. He steps out and plays on the perimeter, and he’s a very good passer. He has the ability to post up inside, too. I see him doing more of that. I know the power forward position is probably the future for him, but he can play the five.”

For now, it’s still uncertain if Porter will reclassify and join his older brother on Mizzou’s roster for the upcoming season or play his senior year at Father Tolton High School, where he and Michael won the 2016 Class 3 state championship. Neff is convinced he’s ready for the college level.

“I don’t think there’s anything he can’t do physically,” Neff said. “He’s spent most of his life preparing for these opportunities. He’s been up against some pretty physical kids over the years and he tends to do well. He’s really intelligent in finding his space and using his body. And being lefthanded has its advantages, too.”

Didn't realize he was a southpaw.



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[KChiefs1]

I'm ready!
https://twitter.com/mizzouhoops/stat...53696383606784



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[Pitt Gorilla]

2020 prospect

https://missouri.rivals.com/news/bra...-with-missouri

[Pitt Gorilla]

Michael Porter Jr. a big part, but only one part, of Martin's Missouri rebuild

https://www.si.com/college-basketbal...low_twitter_si

Cuonzo Martin won’t take all the credit for Michael Porter Jr.

He took a job at Missouri. He hired an out-of-work assistant coach, who happened to be the father of the No. 1 player in the class of 2017. He showcased his new program’s assets, its facilities, its people, its location in the very town where Porter grew up. And so the prized 18-year-old committed to the Tigers, injecting a shot of life into a basketball team that had been listless for more than three years.

What Martin should take credit for, though, is the Michael Porter Jr. Effect.

When the Tigers’ new coach left Cal for Missouri in March, it was to inherit a roster that had been riddled with transfers and went 8-23 the previous season. "I don't want to make it sound like we worked relentless hours,” he says of recruiting Porter, and he stresses that to him, taking a new job has little to do with the program’s record the year before.

Instead, Martin looked at the infrastructure, and he proceeded as if he were recruiting for Kentucky, not Missouri. In the weeks that followed, he retained guard C.J. Roberts, former Tigers coach Kim Anderson’s lone four-star commit in the class of 2017. On April 9, Missouri added Blake Harris, a four-star point guard who, like Porter, had been committed to Washington. On May 3, graduate transfer Kassius Robertson, a wing who averaged 16.1 points, 3.1 rebounds and 2.4 assists at Canisius last year, announced he’d committed to Missouri. And on May 15, the Tigers landed Jeremiah Tilmon, yet another four-star recruit. The center from East St. Louis had been committed to Illinois before the school's coaching change, and he picked Missouri over its former Big 12 rival Kansas.

As it stands, the Tigers’ recruiting class is ranked seventh in the country by Scout.com, and that’s before the team learns whether the younger Porter brother, Jontay, will reclassify to play next season. (Because Jontay, who’s committed to Missouri, hasn’t signed a National Letter of Intent, Martin can’t speak about their relationship or his looming decision.)

Sure, the complete transformation of Missouri’s recruiting class—and by extension, its roster—came about in the wake of Porter joining the Tigers. Without him, Martin would have inherited a years-long rebuild. Instead, it took weeks. But without Martin, it’s impossible to say which, if any, recruits beyond the Porter brothers might have chosen the Tigers (or, in the case of Roberts, remained with them). Porter will likely play only a season for Missouri. Few, if any, members of the rest of the team’s recruiting class can say the same—meaning they’re committing not just to a year with their class’s best player, but likely to a few more without him.

That’s Martin’s doing, even if he won’t cop to any kind of unique sales pitch. He’s confident. He loves the facilities. There’s tradition at Missouri, even if you have to go back more than a decade to find it. And, perhaps most importantly, Martin is emphatic that he plans to work to keep players from Missouri and the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas from getting away. The Porters were easy; their father is on his staff, and their aunt coaches Missouri’s women’s team, whose roster features their two sisters. Tilmon, though, was a much bigger swing. The Tigers have historically struggled to recruit in St. Louis and East St. Louis, which is Martin’s hometown, but in the past few years, they’ve nabbed Terry Beckner Jr., a top football player, and now Tilmon. Making an inroad so quickly in the eastern part of the state is one of Martin’s best early moves.

Missouri’s recruiting class, apart from Jontay, who’s finishing up on the AAU circuit, is largely complete. Kevin Puryear, Terrence Phillips and Jordan Barnett, the three top contributors from last year’s Tigers squad, will return, but at least four four- and five-star freshmen should see big minutes come fall. That’s how the team that won just three conference games a year ago now has 25-1 odds in Vegas to win the national title in 2018. Let’s put that in perspective: In the last 10 years, only eight teams that won fewer than 10 games in a season have gone on to so much as make the tournament the next year. (Only one, Minnesota, plays in a Power 5 conference.) Of those teams, not one advanced past the round of 64. Now, Missouri is projected to have better odds of winning it all than Florida, Villanova, Michigan, UCLA, Gonzaga…the list goes on.

Of course, there are 10 months and a million potential disasters between now and April. Martin now has to form a team out of the players Anderson left behind and his new recruits, a task with a level of inherent awkwardness. Hi, guys, I’m excited to coach you, but I’m also turning this thing upside-down. Martin doesn’t view it that way, though. “When I took the job, the most important thing was the guys on our current roster,” he says. “Those were the most important, and they're still very important. Now we all become one family. It's not a case of you have two teams, let's try to make these two teams fit as one.

"It's also our job for the returning players to welcome the new guys in. That's what you should do regardless of who's coming in. Great programs, they just pass down through time and over the years."

[Pitt Gorilla]

Arlo Becker (MPJ's grandfather) dead at 79, leaves tremendous racing legacy

“If you can’t win, be spectacular.”

Those were six words Arlo Becker lived by traveling across Eastern Iowa and beyond to dirt and asphalt racetracks. No matter if it was in his iconic No. 88 Modified, behind the wheel of heavy machinery working dirt for a race or standing along the fence watching cars go by, those words were all you really needed to know about him.

The legend — who amassed hundreds of wins and many track championships across six decades of racing — died Monday at age 79 after injuries sustained when a tractor he was operating up a steep grade overturned, pinning him to the ground.

His fellow racers, promoters, media members and family remembered him by that quote. Whatever Becker did, it was spectacular, and he stands as one of the seminal figures in Eastern Iowa racing history.

“People don’t understand the actual depth of my dad’s involvement in racing in Eastern Iowa or the upper Midwest,” said Mike Becker, Arlo’s son. “It wasn’t with a helmet on, but he went out working to the end.”

Becker’s work ethic and “roughneck” lifestyle — as described by longtime friend Bill Haglund — earned him a reputation as sometimes gruff, but a man with a big heart. He operated Beckers Auto Salvage in Atkins for many years, and his work mirrored his racing style: all out.

If you raced in Eastern Iowa or watched racing in Eastern Iowa any time between the 1960s and early 2010s, you knew who Arlo Becker was.

His impact on racing as a driver came with the many wins, sure, but it was the way he drove that both endeared him to so many and enraged so many. You either loved Becker or booed Becker. There was no real in between.

But even the guys who he had run-ins with on track had respect for him because, as Cedar Rapids’ veteran racer Johnny Spaw put it, “it didn’t matter who you were, he raced you the same.”

“If you want to talk about entertainment value, no one was more entertaining,” said Tim Plummer, who raced against Becker for several years in Modifieds at Hawkeye Downs. “He always gave the crowd their money’s worth, in one way or another.

“He was an instrumental person in the Modified deal and one of its first stars — and maybe its biggest star.”

Lofty words were thrown around Monday night when people spoke of Becker as they heard the news of his accident and death. Words like “legend,” and “icon,” were thrown around a lot, but so was another one: pioneer.

The IMCA Modified, which now has one of the highest rates of participation of any division in any motorsports sanctioning body across the country, was born in 1979. Along with Merv Chandler and a handful of others from Eastern Iowa, Becker was credited, as Plummer said, with being a central figure in building the class to what it is.

According to IMCA, Becker collected 51 career sanctioned IMCA Modified wins from 1979 through 2005 — including 18 more unsanctioned wins at Benton County Speedway, where the Modified was born — and was IMCA’s first Modified champion.

Longtime race promoter Keith Simmons said Becker would travel around the Midwest with his Modified to introduce the class to different markets and aid in its growth — something that can’t be quantified now, but certainly, Simmons said, was a tremendous help.

Becker also is the inspiration for much of the IMCA rulebook, as well.

Mike Becker joked Monday night, “IMCA didn’t like us,” because in the infancy of the Modified, Becker was an ambassador of the ideology that gaps in the rulebook were meant to be explored. Every person who was able to speak to The Gazette about Becker on Monday — Spaw, Plummer, Haglund, Mike Schulte, Simmons and IMCA President Brett Root — brought up unprompted that “probably half,” of the rules were because of Becker.

While that can often put a strain on sanctioning body and driver, Root — who said he raced against Becker at Benton County Speedway — remembered Becker fondly, even because of that history.

“He’s a fixture of this sport,” Root said. “Arlo was the say-whatever-he-wants, unedited; had one of those personalities that was very unfiltered, very opinionated, very good racer. Everybody has heard of Arlo. Everybody knows from way back to the days he was racing to when he was promoting.

“He was instrumental in ways where he forced IMCA to revisit rules. He was creative. That was his personality. He was as good a racer as there is.”

If there ever was a Mt. Rushmore for Eastern Iowa racing, it was unanimous Becker would have to be included.

He raced against the likes of Darrel Dake, Roger Dolan, Kenny Walton and all the way down to Schulte, Spaw, Plummer and even NASCAR driver Landon Cassill. Cassill was asked once who his favorite was to have raced against, as well as who taught him the most on the track. The Cedar Rapids native always had one answer: Arlo Becker.

“He wasn’t a high-profile guy way back when, but he raced with them and beat them,” Spaw said. “He could have done more and won more if he really would have went for it. But he was a hard worker and stuck with that.

“I’m glad I knew him.”

Into his late 70s, Becker remained active in the racing scene, still promoting his Race ‘Em and Wreck ‘Em demolition events around the area and attending races at Hawkeye Downs — including last Friday night.

He was a staple at tracks and events — including a reunion of veteran racers of the 1960s and 1970s in Lisbon this March — but in his latest days, his life and racing mantra of being “spectacular,” took on a bit of a different meaning.

It was his grandson whose turn it was to be spectacular. One of Becker’s daughters, Lisa Porter, is mother to the No. 1 basketball recruit in the nation, Michael Porter Jr., who is committed to play for Missouri next fall. At that reunion in Lisbon, Becker shared some old racing stories, sure. But he would grab anyone he could by the elbow and talk their ear off about Porter Jr. — as well as find videos on his phone.

Becker would have much rather told stories of Lisa or daughter Robin — now the head women’s basketball coach at Missouri — at Cedar Rapids Jefferson, or Michelle or Mike and their endeavors. His legacy was never of much concern to him.

It was spectacular, though.

“I raced against a lot of guys who were awful good, and each one had their special talents,” Schulte said. “But there was no one in his league as far as getting the most out of a car. He took what the car gave him and got a whole lot more out of it.

“He didn’t care if they cheered or booed, as long as he got something. He wanted to entertain. He did that.”

[KChiefs1]

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

2020 prospect



https://missouri.rivals.com/news/bra...-with-missouri

Cuonzo getting to work early on those St Louis kids. Gotta love it.


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[thebrad84]

http://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/...100k-in-damage



COLUMBIA, Mo. - A 23-year-old MU employee has lost his job and now faces criminal charges after crashing into Mizzou Arena with a Vokswagen and driving the vehicle onto the court over the weekend.

Police confirmed Monday Nathaniel Conant turned himself in Sunday afternoon in connection to a joy ride on the University of Missouri campus in which he's accused of crashing through the Mizzou Arena media gate, through a second garage door and onto the basketball court.

Police estimate Conant's alleged crash course through the facility caused at least $100,000 in damage.

Major Brian Weimer with MUPD says the driver went through a garage door in the back dock area and damaged several golf carts before heading onto the court, where the tires left skid marks in multiple places.


Deadly wreck outside Blue Valley Northwest High School
After exiting through the same dock entrance, the driver is accused of smashing through a second gate near the stadium and fleeing.

Conant is a December 2016 university graduate, and had a job with the university until this incident.

A spokesperson confirmed to the Kansas City Star that Conant had worked in a behind-the-scenes media role for the Tigers' athletics department.

The suspect apparently turned himself a few hours after police learned of the incident, and authorities have since charged him with second-degree burglary and first-degree property damage. He posted $10,500 bond and the jail released him Sunday night.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

-----

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

[gblowfish]

At least Mizzou finally found one dude who can drive the lane and take it to the hoop...

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

At least Mizzou finally found one dude who can drive the lane and take it to the hoop...

[duncan_idaho]

I can only assume this is the one guy still in Columbia who was mad they canned the most incompetent coach in Missouri and potentially NCAA history.


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[Jewish Rabbi]

Originally Posted by duncan_idaho

I can only assume this is the one guy still in Columbia who was mad they canned the most incompetent coach in Missouri and potentially NCAA history.


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Mosbonians grandson.