My feelings exactly.

Good God, how? Why?

Geist kept dribbling into the corner and waiting for the trap. Harris was much better.

Geist was a damn mess with the ball in his hands more often than not tonight. Dude just cannot handle the press.

Mizzou needs Courtney Ramey pretty bad.

When they needed a basket in that last minute, I was not abjectly terrified that he had the ball in his hands. It's not to say that he's a great point guard or even that well suited to handle the press, but that he's made some pretty significant improvement over last year to where I'm comfortable with him on the court and with him touching the ball, whereas he was a consistent disaster last year.

That they do.

If for no other reason than they'll need to replace Kassius as a scoring wing. Not sure where the points will come from next season.

Harris won’t be bad once he learns to slow down. He gets to going so fast his mind out thinks his body,i’ve been there on the court. The worst thing they can do is pick up their dribble in the double team. That’s what got them in trouble with West Virginia, and hurt them tonight. I’m afraid that they are going to see more of this next week against Illinois, and in SEC play.

Did any of you guys watch The Pacific? If so, do you remember Captain Haldane? He was a a firm, fair, compassionate, and incredibly competent leader, the kind of guy that makes you say, "I'm glad he's on our side." That's what I feel like with Cuonzo.

Cuonzo is a ****ing baller.

A legend in Marine Corps lore. True leadership. I agree with CM, so glad he’s Mizzou’s coach. To think Kermit was his predecessor....

Respect.

Damn I miss Zo. Hell of a coach and person.

The Culture of Cuonzo

https://missouri.rivals.com/news/the-culture-of-cuonzo

Two weeks ago, Cuonzo Martin was asked to describe his kind of basketball player.

“Let me ask you a question,” he shot back with a gleam in his eye. “How would you describe me?”

How do you describe Cuonzo Martin? The word is always the same.

“I think he's tough,” Missouri assistant coach Cornell Mann said. “Without a doubt.”

“Tough,” junior forward Kevin Puryear said. “The main component is just being tough and gritty and not taking anything from anybody.”

“Tough,” Stephen F. Austin head coach Kyle Keller said after an 82-81 loss to Martin’s Tigers. “East St. Louis. It doesn’t get any tougher than that.”

“That’s what makes him him,” senior guard Kassius Robertson said. “His toughness.”

That’s Cuonzo Martin. Tough.

The kid who grew up with a single mother in East St. Louis and got out. The young man who helped Purdue to two Big Ten titles, made the all-conference team as a senior and hit eight three-pointers to sink Kansas in the Sweet Sixteen despite two knees that had doctors telling Gene Keady he would never play for the Boilermakers. The professional basketball player who was told at 26 years old he had a cancerous tumor the size of a baseball in his chest that might very well kill him.

Yeah, that’s tough.

“I know he comes from humble beginnings,” Puryear said. “Just to see how appreciative he is to coach us and how appreciative he is of the game of basketball is a true testament to that. He’s just been a pleasure to be around.”

Jim Sterk hired Martin to bring that toughness to Missouri last March. The Tigers were many things over the last three seasons. Tough wasn’t a word very often ascribed to them. The Tigers had won 27 games in three seasons and lost 68. This shouldn’t have been a quick fix.

Then Martin was hired in March and it was quicker than anyone could imagine. He brought in a glitzy, star-filled recruiting class led by the No. 1 high school player in the country. He added Robertson, a graduate transfer from Canisius. But he also leaned on Puryear and Jordan Barnett and Terrence Phillips, the holdovers from the Kim Anderson era who had been through all the losing, to help guide his newcomers in the ways of being a Division One basketball player. He found a role—and a big one—for Jordan Geist, who is currently Missouri’s main point guard after being written off as a guy who could be pushed out to free up a scholarship by many fans in the offseason.

“He’s done a great job of blending Kim (Anderson)’s players from last year with some high level recruits,” Keller said. “That’s hard to do. You all don’t know how hard that is.”

Having gotten all of two minutes and two points out of Michael Porter Jr., Martin has the Tigers sitting 10-2, on the right side of nearly every bracketologist’s prediction and a likely solid favorite against Illinois in Saturday’s Braggin’ Rights game.

How did he do it so quickly? He took a broken program and rebuilt it as his own.

“Not only just in terms of the players, but also in terms of the coaches. We’re a staff that he put together,” Mann said. “Yeah, I think 100 percent, you can see his mark and his hand all over this program. Guys do follow the beat of his drum. No doubt.”

The improvement on the court is obvious. Missouri has already matched its highest win total from the last three years. It was an admittedly low bar to clear. But here’s the thing: If you ask Martin or his players about his coaching style, the basketball doesn’t really even come up.

“Not only has he taught us things on the court, but I’d say people that play for coach Martin are men of integrity,” Puryear said. “That’s just what type of culture he establishes. Being good people and good basketball players as well.”

“You talk about being a man and what that looks like and what that feels like. A lot of times you have to be men on the court,” Mann said. “A lot of times we talk about being a man. But in life, you’re gonna be a dad, you’re gonna be an uncle or hopefully the guys we got are going to be better brothers and all of that. It’s about life. He’s teaching life lessons. He’s coaching basketball, but moreover coaching life.”

“If you’re not teaching life lessons, what are you teaching them?” Martin asked. “You’re wasting their time. Eventually they’ll be somebody’s father, they’ll be somebody’s husband, they’ll run a company one day. If they’re not learning those lessons now, then I didn’t do a good job.

“If I'm not doing it, if my assistant coaches aren’t doing it, then we’ve got to find a new staff.”

Life lessons? Cuonzo Martin’s got a few of those.

“Such a wise guy, too, off the court,” Robertson said. “He’s been through a lot so you can tell he’s learned a lot of lessons. He always tries to help us with that. He’s definitely a guy I look up to on and off the court.”

“He just brings out that fire in you,” Geist said. “Not only to just make us play the best, but also to be the best in the classroom, off the court just everything.”

Robertson has a tough time singling out a lesson he has learned from Martin. Eventually he settles on this: “You have to play your game like it’s going to be your last game. You’re not promised tomorrow. It puts things into perspective of going hard every night and treating every game like it’s your last. You might not get the chance to play ever again so you’ve got to leave it all out there.”

Martin cuts an imposing figure on the sideline. He stomps and scowls and screams. He still—at age 46—looks the part of an all-Big Ten basketball player.

“He brings out that fire,” Geist said. “I saw a video of him on Twitter just screaming. That’s just the way he is.”

He is—to put it bluntly—a no bullshit kind of guy.

“I’m never gonna disrespect them, I’m never going to embarrass them. You’ve never heard me say anything negative about these guys, you never will. But what happens is, I have to give it to them,” Martin said. “I want to win every game, but if I can give them something important to their lives and help them understand this is the truth. It might sting you a little bit, but this is the truth.”

“He’s gonna criticize you very hard,” Puryear said. “He’s gonna also tell you when you’ve done a great job as well. You can see him on the sidelines. He’s fired up and that gets us fired up as well just to see him get so involved in the game.”

“He’s built a certain way,” Mann said. “He’s built with a really tough outer coating. But don’t let it all fool you. It’s all because he’s got a big heart. Everything is made because he’s got a big heart and he cares about people and he cares about Mizzou, he cares about the program.”

Love, heart, life lessons. He's a basketball coach. But it's about so much more than basketball.

“I will do everything in my power so that when they leave this place, they had a great experience,” Martin said. “Not just because you won X amount of games, but my experience as a whole, when they sit back at 30 years old, 40 years old, (if) I get that call or one of the assistant coaches gets that call, ‘Coach I appreciate everything you did for me.’ That’s all that matters.”

For his players at Missouri—who have now been his players for all of nine months, and some not even that long—it’s already happening.

“We all just want to be like him,” Geist said.

“It’s a blessing,” Martin said when the statement was relayed. “I thank God that he said that because that’s what I try to strive to be.”

So how would Martin describe his kind of player?

“Is he a good person?” he asks. “Would they say that about him?”

Indeed, they would.

“He’s been where I want to go,” Robertson said. “He’s definitely someone that I try to emulate.”

Love that dude.

I do think he can be the guy that gets us into the Final 4. I think he can be a guy that coaches here for 20 years and gets a statute outside. He's just such a perfect fit for this region and this program. He's a guy that perfectly blends the old school Norm Stewart 'grittiness' with an ability to actually relate and teach kids.

I can see Kim Anderson saying everything he says in some of these interviews. I can see Anderson believing many of the same things. But Anderson simply had no earthly idea how to get through to these kids apart from publicly belittling them and scolding them for wearing their jackets indoors.

This guy is everything the blue hairs wanted in Anderson and everything people that actually cared about the program's success wanted in anyone. What a great get. He's still facing an uphill climb over the next year or two as the best scorers on the team leave and he needs to backfill that experience, but unlike his successor(s) I think he'll have those lean years that build towards something more than a steady stream of JUCO transfers and kids quitting the team.

I loved Zo when he coached at Mo State. I hope he can get these guys to break the press before we get very far into conference play.

Zo is a stud. You got a hell of a basketball coach. That St. Louis pipeline will pay off big time. For instance Otto Porter loved Zo. He had Missouri State on his top 5 list.

I've been so overwhelmingly surprised by Cuonzo Martin. So happy to have been wrong about him and so glad my doubts about him have largely proven unfounded.

I think they'll be in the market for a grad transfer scorer again next year, but with how successful Robertson has been, hopefully they do well there.

Torrance Watson should be able to play a nice role as a freshman next year.

I they bring Tilmon and Jontay Porter back, they'll be set up to do some things inside, especially with Puryear as a solid supporting piece.

Need that help on the wing. Hope Cuonzo is able to sell Ramey on the opportunity to come in and be The Man at G.


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I think Tilmon is going to be tough to get back and I think Jontay is almost certain to come back unless he somehow fills out his frame.

I think Tilmon might come back because he's not anywhere near ready to contribute defensively in the NBA and he doesn't have the outside shot to get into the rotation on an offensive role. He has two issues (shooting and fouls) that can't go together for a young player at that level. He'll never see the floor.

As much as I like him, he has a couple of fairly fatal warts, especially when combined. I think they'll get him for another year so he can iron out his foul issues and become a premier defensive player. That will get him the playing time he needs at the next level to continue to refine his offensive game.

As for Jontay....man, scouts are going to LOVE that kid. His ability to stand his ground against thicker opponents and his innate timing that makes his blocking ability so good will have guys convinced he could play underneath right away, especially with an off-season in an NBA weight program. And his offense...man, that 3 point range and fantastic court vision will have teams drooling over his potential as a true stretch 5.

I think he'll probably come back because I think he needs to develop physically and can still do so while refining his post game to make himself a genuine top 10 pick. But there's a real chance he leaves early because the tools he doesn't have right now are related to nothing but his age. And if an NBA team can get that guy on the roster at 18 years old and thicken him up, they'll absolutely take a gamble on him in the teens/early 20s. That's exactly what a smart team does with picks that late.

Agree with everything DJ just said re: Tilmon and Porter. I'm more concerned with Jontay leaving than Tilmon.


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I can't imagine Jontay leaves as a mid to late first rounder. He matures for a year and he's lottery.

I think that's probably right. But I also think there's a chance that he's in that late lottery area because that's some raw clay with serious intangibles that teams can mold.

Lonzo Ball just went #2 overall based on nothing but length and court vision. He was picked with the belief that his kind of vision just can't be taught and to some extent that's absolutely right.

There aren't many big men that see the floor like Jontay. And fewer still that see it and can shoot from 3 while also being credible defenders underneath.

He could definitely work his way into the lottery during conference play. It wouldn't even take much more than playing time.

I'm not saying it's likely, I'm just saying it's more likely than Tilmon figuring out his foul issues or developing a viable mid-range game in-season. Without one or both of those things happening, he's a late 1st rounder at best and likely 2nd rounder.

He's presently the more dangerous college player, but Jontay has the better NBA skill-set now and in the future, IMO.

Tilmon's a dinosaur in the NBA that is about pace and space. There just isn't much room on the floor for someone with that skillset anymore. If it was 1997, he'd probably go top five based on size and relative athleticism for a true big, but those days are long gone.

He's athletic enough and runs the floor well enough to see an NBA career for him. Needs to skill up, but yeah, in today's NBA he isn't a one and done like he might have been.

Ramey is a must get.

How you all doing this year.

10-2

Dayum. I don’t keep up with sec b-ball. But well done. You guys a tourney team this year?

Good chance. We've played good teams and can compete (tough loss to WVU). Good front court. Biggest problem is not having a legit point guard. Getting Porter back would help hide the PG deficiencies.

I think we have a 55% chance of making the tournament without Porter. NIT atleast is expected (lame as it is, we haven't played in any postseason tournament since 2014!)

Hopefully Porter heals quickly and decides to play in the regular season. I think with a healthy Porter we are 11-1 and looking at atleast 23 wins.

Overall, tough to say before conference play. SEC may have been a little overrated.

RPI is very high.

So I was trying to figure out how Mizzou's RPI was as high as it is (3) and noticed some interesting stuff in there.

For instance, did anyone else notice that Iowa State has won 9 straight games? Or that St. John's has a top 20 RPI and is sitting at 10-2? Hell, Wagner has a higher RPI than Stephen F. Austin (and SFA looks to be a damn tough team).

It's hard to say anything means all that much at this point in the season when they've played a whopping two true road games and those are often what make/break a season. But still, when you start digging through the schedule a bit more you see why Mizzou's ranked as high by the computers as it is.

And then you start to wonder if they're that good or just a little bit lucky. Iowa State was an absolute mess to start the year before figuring something out. We caught St. John's without their top scorer. Those 2 games may have gone quite differently at a different point in the season.

But again - time will tell. 18 conference games to establish who they really are. Kinda hate having 2 matchups with KY and A&M because those appear to be the two toughest outs in the conference and we get both of them twice, but at the same time it gives them a chance to show off a bit if they can even split them.

Everything is still there in front of these guys for the taking. But damn they need to get the ball control figured out. Can't beat premier teams turning the ball over 20+ times.

Shoulda beaten WV as well. That said, 10-2 with the 3rd RPI....no Porter...whoa

Think of how great we would've been if we would have just given Kim more time!!!

The Illini game will hurt Mizzou's RPI if they win or lose. Illinois is 185th.

Still need to win the game or it’s a baaaad loss come tourney time. M-I-Z

I hope Tilmon goes off tonight to rub a little salt in the wound.

That's why I hate RPI

Good Lord Geist is a ****ing idiot

Zero guard play. Terrible.
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Barnett is fast. Damn

****ing ticky tacky calls

Can we send Giest to the bus now?
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Geist is really playing like shit in this game. Bad passes, terrible drives, getting lost on defense.

Geist has been terrible. Sit him for the night and just play Harris & Phillips.

I hope Cuonzo is recruiting guards hard
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Wtf was that ****ing call

Ridiculous call
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I like Tom Crean doing color commentary.

The refs obviously decided to focus on offensive fouls
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Awful officiating just awful...gave Harris one and took it right back. Four offensive foul calls against Mizzou those are good as turnovers along with the rest(esp Guise) Mizzou down by double digits

16 turnovers in the first half. And what is UI shooting from 3? 50% overall, 46% from 3.
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Mizzou shot 33%. Just an atrocious first half.

Embarrassing. This will look awful on our tournament resume. My god we look like shit.

Tournament? I'll just be happy with a winning record at this point

These refs can go **** themselves

That was a really dumb move. Talking shit and bumping the guy.

This game is being called like an Illini homegame these have to be big ten officials...I was there in 1988, Mizzou ran out final four Illini team came back..let’s return the favor

Jesus ****ing Christ

This God damned state is cursed

Mizzou couldn’t hit water if they fell out a boat

Flop
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Blake Harris is pretty impressive tonight

Wow. They're letting MU get away with murder and they still are playing like ****ing reeruns.

Robertson has been a goddamned abortion. He's just ****ing killing any chance they have to close the gap by bricking every open three in existence.

Only down by 6 after awful shooting night

Dumb mother****er

Harris has done a lot of dumb shit the last six minutes.

Geez harris
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Just get off the court, Phillips. The team is better playing 4-on-5 than having you out there.

How many 3s can they clunk before 1 even comes close to going in?

That's game.

God damn. This team is frustrating as hell to watch

LMAO CHUK MOAR 3S

Jontay isn't the one I want bricking 3s

Stupid shot
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Well, it's the worst offensive performance they've had all year, including that Emporia State debacle.

You aren't going to win any games when you shoot 4-25 from three, have 21 turnovers and get exactly zero points from your bench.

It's like they get stupid as **** and decide they can only shoot 3s. Look inside for ****s sake

To whom? A lot of these threes have been open, they've just bricked the shit out of them.

I don't want the offense going through Tilmon; he's way too limited offensively.

Phillips is just worthless as ****.