Missouri Basketball: 3 reasons why Tigers can advance in NCAA Tournament

3. Overall experience of the roster

There isn’t a lot of experience on Missouri’s roster when it comes to the NCAA Tournament, but that doesn’t mean the Tigers don’t have an experienced roster. Coming into the year, Missouri only had 3 returning players from last year’s roster. Head Coach Dennis Gates had a huge task in assembling a team that would be competitive in his first year, and field a competitive team he did.

He brought four players from Cleveland State with him to Missouri: Tre Gomillion, D’Moi Hodge, Ben Sternberg, and Mabor Majak. Gomillion and Hodge, who played multiple years for Gates at Cleveland State, were the only two to see real minutes this season, with Hodge playing a large role in leading the Tigers’ offense. Both players were able to use their time playing for Gates to help the rest of the team transition to his style of play. What can’t be discounted is the role Gomillion plays on the team, not a big threat offensively, but he is arguably the heart and soul of this team.

Even while playing a smaller portion of minutes as the season continued, mostly due to injury, Gomillion had enough respect to also be a coach for his teammates, not only while on the court but also from the bench.

The experience on the team didn’t stop at the players brought over from Cleveland State. DeAndre Gholston came to Mizzou from Milwaukee, Noah Carter came from Northern Iowa, Isaiah Mosley came from Missouri State, and Nick Honor transferred in from Clemson. Again, none of these players have a lot of NCAA Tournament experience, but much like the transfers from Cleveland State they are all also upperclassmen and have played multiple years of Division I basketball.

This Mizzou roster is made up of 12 juniors, seniors, or graduate students. And the other three players on the roster are only freshmen or sophomores. It’s clear that when Dennis Gates took the Missouri job he wanted to be successful right away, and was able to do that by filling his team with players who have been around the game a long time.

This team doesn’t often get rattled by other teams, they play like the veterans they are. This is something that many teams in the NCAA Tournament wished they had, maturity. The Tigers aren’t going to be the most athletic team, but they have enough experience to not let the tournament be too big for them.