...

'Hamas' Jenkins · 07-20-2017, 07:10 PM

Year two of the Barry Odom era begins in a little over a month.

2017 Schedule:

Spoiler!

Hamas' Crystal ball says 6-6 w/ two SEC wins (SC @ home and @Vandy).

Recruiting:

Bold=Signed LOI

Spoiler!

Pitt Gorilla · 10-10-2017, 11:22 AM

Missouri's package deal for Michael Porter Jr. is refreshingly transparent

https://amp.usatoday.com/story/747858001/

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Once upon a time, long before the FBI started raiding college basketball offices or arresting assistant coaches, before the sleaze of the summer basketball underworld was exposed in wiretaps and indictments, few things were as radioactive as the package deal.

Going back to Larry Brown hiring Ed Manning at Kansas in 1983 to get a pretty good big man named Danny, continuing in 2000 when John Calipari landed scoring prodigy Dajuan Wager at Memphis by putting his father Milt on staff and eventually spreading to numerous other arrangements at dozens of programs, it was the surest and safest, albeit most publicly contemptible way to land a star player.

The transaction was there for everyone to see, even as eyes rolled and rival coaches sighed in righteous indignation. Fewer than 10 years ago, package deals were such a hot-button recruiting issue, the NCAA even made new rules to make them more difficult.

Given what the sport has been dealing with the last two weeks, that debate seems so quaint. In retrospect, the obvious quid pro quo here — hire someone to do a job, get a player (or two, or three) along with them — might be as honest a transaction as college basketball could pull off.

"It always has been," said legendary sneaker executive and grassroots basketball pioneer Sonny Vaccaro. "It shouldn't even be questioned. It's just another rule to pretend the NCAA is protecting recruiting guidelines."

Which brings us to Missouri, a program that has won eight SEC games combined over the past three seasons but could very well return to the NCAA tournament and produce the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft next spring in Michael Porter, Jr., who is arguably at the center of the most impactful package deal in college basketball history.

When athletics director Jim Sterk hired Cuonzo Martin from California on March 15, followed by Martin hiring Michael Porter Sr. as an assistant coach a week later, the dominoes were in place for Missouri to end up not only with Michael Porter Jr. but also his top-25 ranked younger brother Jontay, who accelerated his high school graduation to be college eligible this season. Soon after the Porters were on board, center Jeremiah Tilmon, a top-50 player from East St. Louis, Ill., and top-150 guard Blake Harris followed, instantly transforming a lifeless situation into a program that was on the verge of selling out its entire allotment of season tickets late last week.

“None of those three guys were coming here (otherwise),” Porter Jr. told USA TODAY Sports last week. “Blake is so good, Jeremiah is so good, my brother is very good. I feel like we have every piece in the puzzle to really make a crazy story.”

There isn’t now, and never has been, any pretense with Porter that the situation is something other than what it looks like. A longtime women’s basketball staff member at Missouri, where he worked under his sister-in-law Robin Pingeton, Porter Sr., made the rare move to men’s basketball in the spring of 2016 when Lorenzo Romar hired him to be an assistant at Washington. He family moved to Seattle and Porter, Jr., committed to be a Husky.

When Washington fired Romar in March, ostensibly making the Porters free agents, the idea of coming home to Columbia made sense, especially with two daughters (they have eight children total) already at Missouri on the women’s basketball team. Though Martin and Porter Sr., didn’t know each other well — they had crossed paths in the Pac 12 and on the recruiting circuit — coming together almost seemed preordained.

“Because of Robin, we knew it was a possibility that it could all come together,” Sterk said. “I was traveling with women’s basketball, and she said, ‘You haven’t seen Michael Porter play, have you?” I hadn’t, so I pulled up YouTube, and I was infatuated with the whole concept that it could happen if everything went right.”

Porter Jr. talks comfortably and openly about the idea his father’s career is so directly tied to his talent, though he also said he never had any desire to play at a Kentucky or Duke, where one-and-dones are pushed through every year like cogs in a never-ending machine. Going back home to help revive a program he once watched make NCAA tournament runs was probably an even better outcome than he could have envisioned when his family moved to the Pacific Northwest.

“I always wanted to do my own thing and be remembered for years and years instead of being just another great player to go to an outstanding school,” Porter said. “I really want to leave a legacy in college.”

Though Porter’s situation is more transparent, those kind of comments have drawn skeptical looks across college basketball whenever a top-level prospect eschews the bluebloods for a non-traditional program. Now more than ever, the idea of a coach being a so-called great recruiter carries a different connotation in the wake of an FBI investigation.

Martin, who left Tennessee for a fresh start at California following his Sweet 16 run in 2014, has dealt with those hushed accusations before. In his first full year of recruiting, he landed the No. 7-ranked player on Rivals’ list in Ivan Rabb, a local kid from Oakland who didn’t want to go far from home. But the real shocker was pulling Jaylen Brown, the No. 3 prospect, out of Atlanta, over Kentucky, Michigan and North Carolina.

In high school, Brown played on the Adidas summer circuit and had talked publicly about that affiliation influencing his college decision. At the end of his recruitment, though, Brown dropped the only prominent Adidas school on his list (Kansas) and chose Nike-affiliated Cal seemingly out of nowhere, even paying for an unofficial visit to Berkeley late in the process.

Though Martin said he doesn’t “waste time” worrying about the perception of college basketball recruiting these days — “I don’t lose sleep because I know what we’re about,” he said — he was sensitive enough to the chatter surrounding Rabb and Brown at the time to proactively address rumors of impropriety.

“Between the NCAA, compliance and the Pac 12, I was initiating calls myself,” he said. “They weren't calling me. I felt like it was unfortunate I had to make those calls just to stay on top of everything because I take a tremendous amount of pride in that part. We’ll win and lose a lot of games for however long I’m blessed to do this, but when it's all said and done, what did you stand on as a man? I don’t get consumed with nobody else and their business, but I was initiating those calls from the standpoint of, I wanted to make sure that if you hear of anything (outside the rules), see anything, let me know about it because that’s not how I operate and I never will and I pray to God I’ll never get involved with any of that.”

Though it was a career-making achievement to pull in two top-10 recruits at Cal, the dream season never materialized. Cal dropped out of the Top 25 in November, struggled in January, then surged late in the season, climbing all the way to a No. 4 seed before getting taken out in the first round of the NCAA tournament by Hawaii.

That experience should be instructive for Martin, who will have to blend a group of returning veterans from an 8-23 team last year with more talented young players who may or may not be prepared to live up to the hype.

Though even a short glimpse at a Missouri practice with Porter reveals a supremely smooth 6-10 scorer who has drawn comparisons to Kevin Durant, the track record of top-10 recruits trying to turn around losing teams isn’t good.

Whether it was Markelle Fultz at Washington, Dennis Smith at N.C. State or Ben Simmons at LSU, they have largely had to slog through joyless freshman seasons, even if it didn’t affect their draft stock.

While it’s impossible to assess Missouri as even a tournament team, much less a Final Four contender, Porter insists the difference for him is both the talent he helped attract and his desire to play college basketball at Missouri and not just kill six months waiting for the NBA.

“The big difference between Markelle and me is that Markelle didn’t really have a lot of talent coming with him to Washington,” Porter said. “We have three or four potential pros. So even though this team wasn’t outstanding last year, those guys are older, better, stronger and I have a ton of talent coming in with me. I just feel like I won’t have to take all the weight on my shoulders.”

To their credit, Missouri’s returning players embraced the idea of a turnaround, even though it will mean Porter getting most of the shots and practically all of the attention. They joke that they can't even go out in public with him because of how often he gets stopped for pictures.

“Michael is who is he,” junior forward Kevin Puryear said. “We’re extremely excited to have him here, have him represent our program. There’s no ego with him. He’s easy to play with. There’s going to be two or three guys on him the whole game so that will leave people open and his basketball IQ is through the charts so he’ll make the right play at all times. There will be opportunities for everybody.”

And perhaps the best thing about it, in a year where college basketball’s public image is going to absorb a massive blow, is that nobody has to wonder why it’s happening at Missouri.

Michael Porter Sr. signed a three-year, $1.125 million contract to be an assistant coach and brought instant basketball relevance with him in the form of his two sons.

Who knows whether Missouri will win a bunch of games or fall on its face before Michael Porter Jr. becomes a lottery pick. But given what we’ve learned recently about the sport, the idea this kind of arrangement used to be talked about as everything wrong with college basketball is laughable.

“Coach Porter Sr. is a good man,” Martin said “They have a good family. His son is a talented player; both talented guys. It worked out. If they frown upon it, that’s on them.”

GloryDayz · 10-10-2017, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

Missouri's package deal for Michael Porter Jr. is refreshingly transparent

https://amp.usatoday.com/story/747858001/

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Once upon a time, long before the FBI started raiding college basketball offices or arresting assistant coaches, before the sleaze of the summer basketball underworld was exposed in wiretaps and indictments, few things were as radioactive as the package deal.

Going back to Larry Brown hiring Ed Manning at Kansas in 1983 to get a pretty good big man named Danny, continuing in 2000 when John Calipari landed scoring prodigy Dajuan Wager at Memphis by putting his father Milt on staff and eventually spreading to numerous other arrangements at dozens of programs, it was the surest and safest, albeit most publicly contemptible way to land a star player.

The transaction was there for everyone to see, even as eyes rolled and rival coaches sighed in righteous indignation. Fewer than 10 years ago, package deals were such a hot-button recruiting issue, the NCAA even made new rules to make them more difficult.

Given what the sport has been dealing with the last two weeks, that debate seems so quaint. In retrospect, the obvious quid pro quo here — hire someone to do a job, get a player (or two, or three) along with them — might be as honest a transaction as college basketball could pull off.

"It always has been," said legendary sneaker executive and grassroots basketball pioneer Sonny Vaccaro. "It shouldn't even be questioned. It's just another rule to pretend the NCAA is protecting recruiting guidelines."

Which brings us to Missouri, a program that has won eight SEC games combined over the past three seasons but could very well return to the NCAA tournament and produce the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft next spring in Michael Porter, Jr., who is arguably at the center of the most impactful package deal in college basketball history.

When athletics director Jim Sterk hired Cuonzo Martin from California on March 15, followed by Martin hiring Michael Porter Sr. as an assistant coach a week later, the dominoes were in place for Missouri to end up not only with Michael Porter Jr. but also his top-25 ranked younger brother Jontay, who accelerated his high school graduation to be college eligible this season. Soon after the Porters were on board, center Jeremiah Tilmon, a top-50 player from East St. Louis, Ill., and top-150 guard Blake Harris followed, instantly transforming a lifeless situation into a program that was on the verge of selling out its entire allotment of season tickets late last week.

“None of those three guys were coming here (otherwise),” Porter Jr. told USA TODAY Sports last week. “Blake is so good, Jeremiah is so good, my brother is very good. I feel like we have every piece in the puzzle to really make a crazy story.”

There isn’t now, and never has been, any pretense with Porter that the situation is something other than what it looks like. A longtime women’s basketball staff member at Missouri, where he worked under his sister-in-law Robin Pingeton, Porter Sr., made the rare move to men’s basketball in the spring of 2016 when Lorenzo Romar hired him to be an assistant at Washington. He family moved to Seattle and Porter, Jr., committed to be a Husky.

When Washington fired Romar in March, ostensibly making the Porters free agents, the idea of coming home to Columbia made sense, especially with two daughters (they have eight children total) already at Missouri on the women’s basketball team. Though Martin and Porter Sr., didn’t know each other well — they had crossed paths in the Pac 12 and on the recruiting circuit — coming together almost seemed preordained.

“Because of Robin, we knew it was a possibility that it could all come together,” Sterk said. “I was traveling with women’s basketball, and she said, ‘You haven’t seen Michael Porter play, have you?” I hadn’t, so I pulled up YouTube, and I was infatuated with the whole concept that it could happen if everything went right.”

Porter Jr. talks comfortably and openly about the idea his father’s career is so directly tied to his talent, though he also said he never had any desire to play at a Kentucky or Duke, where one-and-dones are pushed through every year like cogs in a never-ending machine. Going back home to help revive a program he once watched make NCAA tournament runs was probably an even better outcome than he could have envisioned when his family moved to the Pacific Northwest.

“I always wanted to do my own thing and be remembered for years and years instead of being just another great player to go to an outstanding school,” Porter said. “I really want to leave a legacy in college.”

Though Porter’s situation is more transparent, those kind of comments have drawn skeptical looks across college basketball whenever a top-level prospect eschews the bluebloods for a non-traditional program. Now more than ever, the idea of a coach being a so-called great recruiter carries a different connotation in the wake of an FBI investigation.

Martin, who left Tennessee for a fresh start at California following his Sweet 16 run in 2014, has dealt with those hushed accusations before. In his first full year of recruiting, he landed the No. 7-ranked player on Rivals’ list in Ivan Rabb, a local kid from Oakland who didn’t want to go far from home. But the real shocker was pulling Jaylen Brown, the No. 3 prospect, out of Atlanta, over Kentucky, Michigan and North Carolina.

In high school, Brown played on the Adidas summer circuit and had talked publicly about that affiliation influencing his college decision. At the end of his recruitment, though, Brown dropped the only prominent Adidas school on his list (Kansas) and chose Nike-affiliated Cal seemingly out of nowhere, even paying for an unofficial visit to Berkeley late in the process.

Though Martin said he doesn’t “waste time” worrying about the perception of college basketball recruiting these days — “I don’t lose sleep because I know what we’re about,” he said — he was sensitive enough to the chatter surrounding Rabb and Brown at the time to proactively address rumors of impropriety.

“Between the NCAA, compliance and the Pac 12, I was initiating calls myself,” he said. “They weren't calling me. I felt like it was unfortunate I had to make those calls just to stay on top of everything because I take a tremendous amount of pride in that part. We’ll win and lose a lot of games for however long I’m blessed to do this, but when it's all said and done, what did you stand on as a man? I don’t get consumed with nobody else and their business, but I was initiating those calls from the standpoint of, I wanted to make sure that if you hear of anything (outside the rules), see anything, let me know about it because that’s not how I operate and I never will and I pray to God I’ll never get involved with any of that.”

Though it was a career-making achievement to pull in two top-10 recruits at Cal, the dream season never materialized. Cal dropped out of the Top 25 in November, struggled in January, then surged late in the season, climbing all the way to a No. 4 seed before getting taken out in the first round of the NCAA tournament by Hawaii.

That experience should be instructive for Martin, who will have to blend a group of returning veterans from an 8-23 team last year with more talented young players who may or may not be prepared to live up to the hype.

Though even a short glimpse at a Missouri practice with Porter reveals a supremely smooth 6-10 scorer who has drawn comparisons to Kevin Durant, the track record of top-10 recruits trying to turn around losing teams isn’t good.

Whether it was Markelle Fultz at Washington, Dennis Smith at N.C. State or Ben Simmons at LSU, they have largely had to slog through joyless freshman seasons, even if it didn’t affect their draft stock.

While it’s impossible to assess Missouri as even a tournament team, much less a Final Four contender, Porter insists the difference for him is both the talent he helped attract and his desire to play college basketball at Missouri and not just kill six months waiting for the NBA.

“The big difference between Markelle and me is that Markelle didn’t really have a lot of talent coming with him to Washington,” Porter said. “We have three or four potential pros. So even though this team wasn’t outstanding last year, those guys are older, better, stronger and I have a ton of talent coming in with me. I just feel like I won’t have to take all the weight on my shoulders.”

To their credit, Missouri’s returning players embraced the idea of a turnaround, even though it will mean Porter getting most of the shots and practically all of the attention. They joke that they can't even go out in public with him because of how often he gets stopped for pictures.

“Michael is who is he,” junior forward Kevin Puryear said. “We’re extremely excited to have him here, have him represent our program. There’s no ego with him. He’s easy to play with. There’s going to be two or three guys on him the whole game so that will leave people open and his basketball IQ is through the charts so he’ll make the right play at all times. There will be opportunities for everybody.”

And perhaps the best thing about it, in a year where college basketball’s public image is going to absorb a massive blow, is that nobody has to wonder why it’s happening at Missouri.

Michael Porter Sr. signed a three-year, $1.125 million contract to be an assistant coach and brought instant basketball relevance with him in the form of his two sons.

Who knows whether Missouri will win a bunch of games or fall on its face before Michael Porter Jr. becomes a lottery pick. But given what we’ve learned recently about the sport, the idea this kind of arrangement used to be talked about as everything wrong with college basketball is laughable.

“Coach Porter Sr. is a good man,” Martin said “They have a good family. His son is a talented player; both talented guys. It worked out. If they frown upon it, that’s on them.”

Very cool. Let's hope they're right, Lord knows MIZZOU needs a good team in something, and in the SEC basketball should present an opportunity to shine.

Like!

BryanBusby · 10-14-2017, 06:33 PM

Some of the worst Defensive plays I've ever seen. This D is way too slow to be leaving large chunks of the field empty.

I guess part of Odoms contract was to make playbook chalk full of reeruned shit.

Reerun_KC · 10-14-2017, 06:39 PM

MizSEC about to end GA season.

penbrook · 10-14-2017, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reerun_KC

MizSEC about to end GA season.

Miz our has no defense

BryanBusby · 10-14-2017, 07:13 PM

13 point deficit is enough to end any hope of an upset

BryanBusby · 10-14-2017, 08:02 PM

I don't see how Barry Odom isn't fired after the Arky game.

He's toast.

'Hamas' Jenkins · 10-14-2017, 08:09 PM

This is the worst defense I've ever seen.

BryanBusby · 10-14-2017, 08:12 PM

Offense has been trash outside of some hail mary type of throws.

GloryDayz · 10-14-2017, 08:25 PM

Catching up on DVR. Wow, so far Lock is a God (his coaches when he was a kid must have been AWESOME!!!), our defense is pure ass.

BryanBusby · 10-14-2017, 08:30 PM

Lock sucks

GloryDayz · 10-14-2017, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BryanBusby

Lock sucks

LOL, you much know a kid on our defense! If you do remind her that she's embarrassing the state, and it should go ahead and compete the sex change. I'll remind Drew he's doing very well and he can't play defense too..

'Hamas' Jenkins · 10-14-2017, 08:39 PM

Lock simply is not accurate enough. His touch is extremely poor.

BryanBusby · 10-14-2017, 08:40 PM

Lock is trash

GloryDayz · 10-14-2017, 08:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Lock simply is not accurate enough. His touch is extremely poor.

Hmmmmm, I seem to recall two perfect strikes for TDs, and one that would have been had the kid not lost the ball in the lights.

But hey, they're a 25 point play away from a tie thanks to our D.

07-20-2017, 07:10 PM
'Hamas' Jenkins Now you've pissed me off! 'Hamas' Jenkins's Avatar Join Date: Jan 2006	**Official 2017 Missouri Tigers Football Thread Year two of the Barry Odom era begins in a little over a month. 2017 Schedule: Spoiler! 9/2: vs Southwest Missouri State 9/9: vs South Carolina 9/16: vs Purdue 9/23: vs Auburn 10/7: @Kentucky 10/14: @Georgia 10/21: vs Idaho 10/28 @UConn 11/4: vs Florida 11/11: vs Tennessee 11/18: @Vanderbilt 11/24: @Arkansas Hamas' Crystal ball says 6-6 w/ two SEC wins (SC @ home and @Vandy). Recruiting: Bold=Signed LOI Spoiler! Commitments: Daniel Parker Jr, DE: ** 5.8 RR, Blue Springs, MO Antar Thompson, DT: * 5.7 RR, Highland C.C. (JUCO), KS Mike Ruth, OL: * 5.6 RR, Coppell, TX Danny Gray, WR: , 5.7 RR, Dallas, TX* Harry Ballard III, WR: , 5.5 RR, Ellisville, MS* Jalen Knox, RB: *, 5.7 RR, Arlington, TX Tyrone Collins, DB, , 5.5 RR, Bradenton, FL Kam Scott, WR: , 5.7 RR, Manvel, TX Chad Bailey, LB: , 5.8 RR, Missouri City, TX Cameron Wilkins, LB: , 5.6 RR, Del Valle, TX* Jarvis Ware, CB: , 5.3 RR, Apopka, FL Trajan Jeffcoat, DE: *, 5.5 RR, Columbia, SC Gerald Nathan Jr., LB: , 5.5 RR, Charlotte, NC* Chris Mills, DB: , 5.5 RR, Converse, TX* Dominic Gicinto, WR: , 5.3 RR, Raytown, MO Javon Foster, OL: , 5.3 RR, West Bloomfield, MI Khmari Thompson, WR: , 5.5 RR, Lawrenceville, GA* Sami Bakare, RB: , 5.4 RR, Austin, TX Nick Bolton, LB, , 5.6 RR, Frisco, TX Xavier Delgado, OT, , 5.5 RR, Glendale, AZ Bobby Lawrence, OL, , 5.4 RR, St. Joseph, MO Lindsey Scott Jr. QB, , 5.7 RR, Scooby MS (JUCO)* Jatorian Hansford, LB, , 5.6 RR, Forsyth, GA* Tyler Badie, RB, , 5.3 RR, Memphis, TN** There are several key recruits in state this year, and Missouri is not off to a promising start. There are seven 4* players within the state and thus far Missouri has no commitments. Texas and Nebraska both have one. If Odom cannot lock down a good portion of this in-state talent crop, it's unlikely he sees his second recruiting class graduate. Last edited by 'Hamas' Jenkins; 02-07-2018 at 10:01 AM..
Posts: 74,853

10-10-2017, 11:22 AM	#571
Pitt Gorilla Banned! Pitt Gorilla's Avatar Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: NOT Columbia, MO 65201	Missouri's package deal for Michael Porter Jr. is refreshingly transparent https://amp.usatoday.com/story/747858001/ COLUMBIA, Mo. — Once upon a time, long before the FBI started raiding college basketball offices or arresting assistant coaches, before the sleaze of the summer basketball underworld was exposed in wiretaps and indictments, few things were as radioactive as the package deal. Going back to Larry Brown hiring Ed Manning at Kansas in 1983 to get a pretty good big man named Danny, continuing in 2000 when John Calipari landed scoring prodigy Dajuan Wager at Memphis by putting his father Milt on staff and eventually spreading to numerous other arrangements at dozens of programs, it was the surest and safest, albeit most publicly contemptible way to land a star player. The transaction was there for everyone to see, even as eyes rolled and rival coaches sighed in righteous indignation. Fewer than 10 years ago, package deals were such a hot-button recruiting issue, the NCAA even made new rules to make them more difficult. Given what the sport has been dealing with the last two weeks, that debate seems so quaint. In retrospect, the obvious quid pro quo here — hire someone to do a job, get a player (or two, or three) along with them — might be as honest a transaction as college basketball could pull off. "It always has been," said legendary sneaker executive and grassroots basketball pioneer Sonny Vaccaro. "It shouldn't even be questioned. It's just another rule to pretend the NCAA is protecting recruiting guidelines." Which brings us to Missouri, a program that has won eight SEC games combined over the past three seasons but could very well return to the NCAA tournament and produce the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft next spring in Michael Porter, Jr., who is arguably at the center of the most impactful package deal in college basketball history. When athletics director Jim Sterk hired Cuonzo Martin from California on March 15, followed by Martin hiring Michael Porter Sr. as an assistant coach a week later, the dominoes were in place for Missouri to end up not only with Michael Porter Jr. but also his top-25 ranked younger brother Jontay, who accelerated his high school graduation to be college eligible this season. Soon after the Porters were on board, center Jeremiah Tilmon, a top-50 player from East St. Louis, Ill., and top-150 guard Blake Harris followed, instantly transforming a lifeless situation into a program that was on the verge of selling out its entire allotment of season tickets late last week. “None of those three guys were coming here (otherwise),” Porter Jr. told USA TODAY Sports last week. “Blake is so good, Jeremiah is so good, my brother is very good. I feel like we have every piece in the puzzle to really make a crazy story.” There isn’t now, and never has been, any pretense with Porter that the situation is something other than what it looks like. A longtime women’s basketball staff member at Missouri, where he worked under his sister-in-law Robin Pingeton, Porter Sr., made the rare move to men’s basketball in the spring of 2016 when Lorenzo Romar hired him to be an assistant at Washington. He family moved to Seattle and Porter, Jr., committed to be a Husky. When Washington fired Romar in March, ostensibly making the Porters free agents, the idea of coming home to Columbia made sense, especially with two daughters (they have eight children total) already at Missouri on the women’s basketball team. Though Martin and Porter Sr., didn’t know each other well — they had crossed paths in the Pac 12 and on the recruiting circuit — coming together almost seemed preordained. “Because of Robin, we knew it was a possibility that it could all come together,” Sterk said. “I was traveling with women’s basketball, and she said, ‘You haven’t seen Michael Porter play, have you?” I hadn’t, so I pulled up YouTube, and I was infatuated with the whole concept that it could happen if everything went right.” Porter Jr. talks comfortably and openly about the idea his father’s career is so directly tied to his talent, though he also said he never had any desire to play at a Kentucky or Duke, where one-and-dones are pushed through every year like cogs in a never-ending machine. Going back home to help revive a program he once watched make NCAA tournament runs was probably an even better outcome than he could have envisioned when his family moved to the Pacific Northwest. “I always wanted to do my own thing and be remembered for years and years instead of being just another great player to go to an outstanding school,” Porter said. “I really want to leave a legacy in college.” Though Porter’s situation is more transparent, those kind of comments have drawn skeptical looks across college basketball whenever a top-level prospect eschews the bluebloods for a non-traditional program. Now more than ever, the idea of a coach being a so-called great recruiter carries a different connotation in the wake of an FBI investigation. Martin, who left Tennessee for a fresh start at California following his Sweet 16 run in 2014, has dealt with those hushed accusations before. In his first full year of recruiting, he landed the No. 7-ranked player on Rivals’ list in Ivan Rabb, a local kid from Oakland who didn’t want to go far from home. But the real shocker was pulling Jaylen Brown, the No. 3 prospect, out of Atlanta, over Kentucky, Michigan and North Carolina. In high school, Brown played on the Adidas summer circuit and had talked publicly about that affiliation influencing his college decision. At the end of his recruitment, though, Brown dropped the only prominent Adidas school on his list (Kansas) and chose Nike-affiliated Cal seemingly out of nowhere, even paying for an unofficial visit to Berkeley late in the process. Though Martin said he doesn’t “waste time” worrying about the perception of college basketball recruiting these days — “I don’t lose sleep because I know what we’re about,” he said — he was sensitive enough to the chatter surrounding Rabb and Brown at the time to proactively address rumors of impropriety. “Between the NCAA, compliance and the Pac 12, I was initiating calls myself,” he said. “They weren't calling me. I felt like it was unfortunate I had to make those calls just to stay on top of everything because I take a tremendous amount of pride in that part. We’ll win and lose a lot of games for however long I’m blessed to do this, but when it's all said and done, what did you stand on as a man? I don’t get consumed with nobody else and their business, but I was initiating those calls from the standpoint of, I wanted to make sure that if you hear of anything (outside the rules), see anything, let me know about it because that’s not how I operate and I never will and I pray to God I’ll never get involved with any of that.” Though it was a career-making achievement to pull in two top-10 recruits at Cal, the dream season never materialized. Cal dropped out of the Top 25 in November, struggled in January, then surged late in the season, climbing all the way to a No. 4 seed before getting taken out in the first round of the NCAA tournament by Hawaii. That experience should be instructive for Martin, who will have to blend a group of returning veterans from an 8-23 team last year with more talented young players who may or may not be prepared to live up to the hype. Though even a short glimpse at a Missouri practice with Porter reveals a supremely smooth 6-10 scorer who has drawn comparisons to Kevin Durant, the track record of top-10 recruits trying to turn around losing teams isn’t good. Whether it was Markelle Fultz at Washington, Dennis Smith at N.C. State or Ben Simmons at LSU, they have largely had to slog through joyless freshman seasons, even if it didn’t affect their draft stock. While it’s impossible to assess Missouri as even a tournament team, much less a Final Four contender, Porter insists the difference for him is both the talent he helped attract and his desire to play college basketball at Missouri and not just kill six months waiting for the NBA. “The big difference between Markelle and me is that Markelle didn’t really have a lot of talent coming with him to Washington,” Porter said. “We have three or four potential pros. So even though this team wasn’t outstanding last year, those guys are older, better, stronger and I have a ton of talent coming in with me. I just feel like I won’t have to take all the weight on my shoulders.” To their credit, Missouri’s returning players embraced the idea of a turnaround, even though it will mean Porter getting most of the shots and practically all of the attention. They joke that they can't even go out in public with him because of how often he gets stopped for pictures. “Michael is who is he,” junior forward Kevin Puryear said. “We’re extremely excited to have him here, have him represent our program. There’s no ego with him. He’s easy to play with. There’s going to be two or three guys on him the whole game so that will leave people open and his basketball IQ is through the charts so he’ll make the right play at all times. There will be opportunities for everybody.” And perhaps the best thing about it, in a year where college basketball’s public image is going to absorb a massive blow, is that nobody has to wonder why it’s happening at Missouri. Michael Porter Sr. signed a three-year, $1.125 million contract to be an assistant coach and brought instant basketball relevance with him in the form of his two sons. Who knows whether Missouri will win a bunch of games or fall on its face before Michael Porter Jr. becomes a lottery pick. But given what we’ve learned recently about the sport, the idea this kind of arrangement used to be talked about as everything wrong with college basketball is laughable. “Coach Porter Sr. is a good man,” Martin said “They have a good family. His son is a talented player; both talented guys. It worked out. If they frown upon it, that’s on them.”
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10-14-2017, 06:33 PM	#573
BryanBusby In Search of a Life BryanBusby's Avatar Join Date: Mar 2006	Some of the worst Defensive plays I've ever seen. This D is way too slow to be leaving large chunks of the field empty. I guess part of Odoms contract was to make playbook chalk full of reeruned shit.
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10-14-2017, 06:39 PM	#574
Reerun_KC Rock Chalk Jayhawks! KU!!! Reerun_KC's Avatar Join Date: Aug 2005	MizSEC about to end GA season.
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10-14-2017, 07:13 PM	#576
BryanBusby In Search of a Life BryanBusby's Avatar Join Date: Mar 2006	13 point deficit is enough to end any hope of an upset
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10-14-2017, 08:02 PM	#577
BryanBusby In Search of a Life BryanBusby's Avatar Join Date: Mar 2006	I don't see how Barry Odom isn't fired after the Arky game. He's toast.
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10-14-2017, 08:09 PM	#578
'Hamas' Jenkins Now you've pissed me off! 'Hamas' Jenkins's Avatar Join Date: Jan 2006	This is the worst defense I've ever seen.
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10-14-2017, 08:12 PM	#579
BryanBusby In Search of a Life BryanBusby's Avatar Join Date: Mar 2006	Offense has been trash outside of some hail mary type of throws.
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10-14-2017, 08:25 PM	#580
GloryDayz (Sir/Yes Sir/Aye Aye Sir) GloryDayz's Avatar Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Diving	Catching up on DVR. Wow, so far Lock is a God (his coaches when he was a kid must have been AWESOME!!!), our defense is pure ass.
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10-14-2017, 08:30 PM	#581
BryanBusby In Search of a Life BryanBusby's Avatar Join Date: Mar 2006	Lock sucks
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10-14-2017, 08:39 PM	#583
'Hamas' Jenkins Now you've pissed me off! 'Hamas' Jenkins's Avatar Join Date: Jan 2006	Lock simply is not accurate enough. His touch is extremely poor.
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10-14-2017, 08:40 PM	#584
BryanBusby In Search of a Life BryanBusby's Avatar Join Date: Mar 2006	Lock is trash
Posts: 22,231