Missouri basketball: Analyzing incoming transfers for the 2024-25 season

The transfer portal is once again the talk of the college basketball offseason. Each year the portal seemingly grows larger, impacting nearly every college basketball program in some fashion. This rings true for the Missouri Tigers. Going into his third season leading Mizzou, coach Dennis Gates is again navigating the choppy portal waters to build a formidable roster, hoping to bounce back from one of the worst seasons in program history. 

In Gates’ first year in Columbia, he found success signing players out of the portal, leading the Tigers to the team's best NCAA Tournament finish in a decade. Year number two also saw Gates adding transfers to the roster, but lightning didn’t strike twice for Mizzou. The roster never really came together, and due to injuries, some of the more highly anticipated transfer portal additions never really found their footing. I only say this to reiterate that using the transfer portal to build a majority of your roster is high risk, but can also be high reward. Missouri and Dennis Gates have seen both sides of that coin. Year three brings more of the same. Gates has spent most of the offseason trying to learn from last season and build a roster for this next season that will be able to compete not only in the SEC but also on a national scale. 

Mizzou has already seen its fair share of portal entrants this off-season. When the transfer portal window closed on May 1, six Missouri players had thrown their names into that ring. John Tonje, Kaleb Brown, Curt Lewis, Jesus Carralero Martin, Jordan Butler, and Mabor Majak all decided to test portal waters, hoping to find success with different programs. All of these players saw their roles vary this past season as many of them battled injuries at some point, but ultimately never really found their footing and decided a change of scenery would be beneficial. 

But I’m not here to look at what Missouri lost to the portal. I want to look forward with (measured) optimism at the portal class coach Dennis Gates has signed for the 2024-25 season.