NCAA Basketball: Missouri, DePaul, and Illinois highlight Sunday Mailbag
By Bryan Mauro
How do you fix Missouri? – Lauren Rosenberg (@lrosenberg101)
The Missouri Tigers surprised everyone and made the NCAA tournament a season ago. They were not expected to be very good a season ago and were. In the off-season, the roster was gutted with many of the key players either graduating or transferring to a different program. There is a lot of speculation as to why, but the bottom line is those moves have killed the momentum developed in the Cuonzo Martin era.
Full disclosure as I have not watched the Tigers play much this year, but what I have seen is a team that looks disjointed and a team that has flat out quit on their coach. It’s no secret that Coach Martin is likely going to be replaced at some point in the near future. It likely won’t be next year, given that he got Missouri to the tournament a year ago, but years like this one are more normal under coach Martin. It is a shame to watch the Tigers struggle so badly given the tradition that program built under former coaches Quin Snyder and Frank Haith. Those teams made the tournament every season and fared well in their conference.
The move to the SEC has not been kind to Missouri in either of the money-making sports. On basketball, if you ask around those who follow the Tigers more than I do have said Missouri has a huge culture program and it isn’t something that Coach Martin knows how to fix. Culture is one of the biggest factors in running a successful program. If you have a good culture the players buy-in and play hard for the coach. The wins will come, a bad culture leads to bad habits and blowout losses.
The main problem with this year’s version of the Tigers however is something that can not be fixed as it is a talent problem. Coach Martin had to build this team from the ground up as all of the production from a season ago is no longer on campus. That method very rarely works, and it never works if you don’t have a bunch of one-and-done players on your team.
The best plan of action for Missouri at this point is to just ride out this year, let these players get another year older, and see if they can return to the NCAA tournament. Coach Martin is not going to have much goodwill anymore after this season.