Missouri Basketball: 3 biggest questions heading into 2023-24 season

3) Can Head Coach Dennis Gates build on his successful first season?

Expectations are high for Dennis Gates and the Missouri Tigers. In his first year, Coach Gates took a team composed largely of transfer players from Mid Major schools and led them to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Something that Missouri hadn’t done since 2010. Now he looks to build on that success in year two.

The Missouri coaching staff will have its work cut out for it this season. It is hard to replace a first-round NBA draft pick in Kobe Brown and scoring and defense of D’Moi Hodge, but the players brought in from the transfer portal have the skills to make up for lost production. Along with a solid core of returning players, Coach Gates should be able to replicate the success of last season. The team should improve its post-defense and rebounding this year after making size and strength a priority this offseason.

A successful second season, in my mind, doesn’t necessarily mean more wins. At this time the non-conference schedule for the Tigers hasn’t been released, a few tough games are already set, but it will be interesting to see if Missouri goes with softer opponents like last year or throws in more challenging games to help boost the resume for the NCAA Tournament. I think that if Missouri and Dennis Gates can make it back to the NCAA Tournament this upcoming season would be considered a success.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a little regression after losing the team’s top three scorers from last season, but I think that with all of the experience this team has they should be a tough matchup for almost every team they play.