For the Missouri basketball program, it's only the beginning

From all indications, the career college stat line will read 2-2-2: two minutes, two points, two rebounds. And yet the legacy of Michael Porter Jr. in Missouri basketball lore is secure.

How so, you ask? How can a kid who played all of 127 seconds have that kind of an impact? Let us count the ways. Look down the Mizzou bench: brother Jontay, Jeremiah Tilmon, Blake Harris, Kassius Robertson. How many of those talents would be in Columbia if not for Porter? Look back to the season opener against Iowa State, when Mizzou Arena was packed to the gills for the first time in years. Look at the uptick in recruiting, and listen to the buzz around the country about the program. Questions about Porter’s future are followed by speculation about how good this team can be without him.

Let’s get this out of the way up front: Michael Porter Jr. isn’t coming back for another year of college basketball. Sure, he’d love to play a full season for his father and with his brother, and yes, he’d like nothing more than to take Mizzou basketball to places it’s never been. This, however, is a business decision. No doubt, Porter had the surgery when he did so he can show NBA teams he’s healthy and still a worthy top-five investment in the draft. Talk all you want about his love for Mizzou and Columbia. Backs can be tricky — just ask Tiger Woods. What happens if Porter does return, and the back goes out again? You can bleed black and gold to the bone, but if this were your son, you’d make the same decision.

I trust that Porter will be back on the bench at some point, flashing that contagious grin and being as vocal and supportive as ever. From a competitive standpoint, however, it’s time for both sides to move on. In games against Utah and Emporia State, the Tigers played like a team that was bracing for the inevitable. Sloppy turnovers. Poor shot selection. Waning energy. But at the Advocare Invitational in Orlando, Mizzou showed what’s possible. Despite what some media outlets have written, this team never was going to be known as Michael Porter Jr. and his Band of Basketball Joes. Take Porter out of the equation, and this year’s class still would have ranked 11th by at least one recruiting service. Jontay, Tilmon, Harris and Robertson would be welcome at most every Division I program in the country. They were drawn to Columbia by a megastar who also happened to be a pretty good recruiter.

There will be rough stretches, no doubt. The one thing Mizzou loses without Porter is not having a player who can take over a game, who can create a shot and score points by the boatload when the offense goes in a funk. Witness what happened against Utah and for a stretch of the second half against St. John’s and West Virginia. The good news is that the rest of the non-conference schedule isn’t particularly daunting. There is time over the next month to develop chemistry, to solidify the rotation, to settle on a point guard.

When things get tough — and fasten your seat belts when watching a team playing so many youngsters — I suggest that players and fans look across the street from Mizzou Arena in the direction of Faurot Field. In mid-October, on the same weekend the basketball team was kicking off formal practices with a rollicking public exhibition, the football Tigers were licking their wounds after a 53-28 loss at Georgia. It was their fifth consecutive defeat. Barry Odom was on the hot seat. Recruits were decommitting. The program was heading into the abyss.

Look at that team now.

The fans had pretty much given up as well, a mindset not unlike the one adopted by too many in the wake of the Porter news. (One poster on PowerMizzou went so far as to ask if there was any interest in filing a class-action suit against the athletic department, claiming it misled the public by hawking season tickets while knowing Porter was injured and would never play for the Tigers. You can’t make this stuff up!) I get it. All of college basketball has been cheated of an opportunity to watch one of the young stars in the game, and this was an especially cruel gut punch for a fan base that has been tortured too many times before. Yes, the notion that a program that has never been to the Final Four could be the seventh betting favorite to win the national championship was whimsical — the things people do with their money! — but no one in the basketball program was turning out the lights at Mizzou Arena when the Porter news came down. Least of all Cuonzo Martin.

In the early 1990s, Martin walked around the Purdue campus on knees so bad that doctors wondered whether he’d ever play college basketball. Then he beat cancer. More than once he has made it clear that he never saw this job as a one-year mission. He’s here for the long haul, to rebuild a proud program into a title contender. I expect these Tigers will take on the same mentality as their coach. I expect we’ll see the same kind of fight they exhibited in a victory over St. John’s, when they went from 16 points up to eight down to winning by eight. (A victory like that against a potential tournament team can go a long way.) And I expect we’ll see plenty of entertaining basketball from a long, athletic and deep squad. For all of these reasons, I’d like to think this talented team will continue to play in front of packed houses at Mizzou Arena. At some point, Michael Porter Jr. will be there, leading the cheers.

Where will you be?

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March Madness comes early for Mizzou against longtime rival

The calendar said October, but the atmosphere in the afternoon glow of the Sprint Center shouted a matchup deep into March. For at least one exciting day, what once was the oldest rivalry west of the Mississippi roared back to life during Showdown for Relief, a charity exhibition basketball game between Mizzou and Kansas. The capacity crowd brought The Border War back to life, with more than 18,000 seated in Kansas City’s Sprint Center and another 16,000 streaming online. Together, the fan bases and programs of a rivalry that hadn’t played since 2012 raised more than $1.7 million for hurricane relief efforts.

“The atmosphere here was crazy. It seemed like an NCAA tournament game,” senior forward Jordan Barnett says. “It was amazing to hear the energized fans. They just made it that much more fun to play.”

The box score read a six-point defeat in an exhibition game (93-87), but what seemed more important was a Missouri program competitive on its biggest stage since moving to the SEC — and its fans reenergized, there for it all.

“I think it’s great for both teams,” coach Cuonzo Martin said after his Missouri debut. “To be able to play a team of that caliber on this stage was great, and with the atmosphere and the energy behind it. Michael Porter Jr. is a talented guy, but he has never been on a stage like this. Now as you move forward, you know what it looks like, and you’re not so consumed by the atmosphere as opposed to what’s going on on the floor.

“I think it will really help us as a team. It’s a win-win. Unfortunately, we didn’t win the game, but I think we can only get better from it.”

Mizzou fans were eager to see their most highly touted recruit since Steve Stipanovich — or perhaps ever — and they didn’t have to wait long. Porter scored on a dunk just two minutes into the game — And One. He was fouled and sank the free throw. A minute later, he drained a three-pointer from the right corner. Despite a team-high 21 points, however, Porter looked entirely distraught, disappointed with his 6-for-20 field goal shooting.

“First of all, it was great to get out there and play,” Porter says. “I was pretty disappointed with my personal performance. I felt there were a lot more things I could have done for the team. I put it on myself. Although there was stuff the whole team could have done better, there was a lot more I should have done for my team.”

Was the freshman forward too hard on himself? Possibly. But when you’re Michael Porter Jr., you’ll have to dig deep in a rolodex of memories to come up with losses. And few of this caliber.

“I don’t think he takes it any harder than his teammates,” Martin says. “They want to win the game. When you’re a competitor, there’s no such thing as an exhibition game. They’re all real games. I think he took it personally from the standpoint that he didn’t feel he played as well as he could have with his field goal percentage. But for me, that’s not the real gauge: It’s whether you rebound, play hard and put pressure on the basketball. Those are the things we can control every night.”

The showdown game provided a rare opportunity to match up against a powerhouse team — one of those blue bloods, who under Bill Self, has typically found a spot deep into March Madness — before the results would even count in the standings. “Kansas is an established program and a great team,” Porter says. “One thing I take away from the game is how much better we can get. We are a very talented team, and we had spots in the game where we showed that, but if we keep working hard every day in practice, we will be there at the end.

“It’s a huge rivalry, and we knew that coming into the game. We knew it meant a lot to a lot of people. But we came up short. It’s time to go back to practice and work hard to get ready for our first real game of the season.”

Barnett agrees. “We expected it to be a really good game,” he says. “We knew it would be a challenge. We came up short, but we played with them for a large part of the game. I learned that we can compete with the best. We had some defensive issues, and once we shore those up, we will be one of the top teams. Being part of a game like that helps us get ready to play in an atmosphere that is neutral and electric on both sides.”

The game provides a barometer for the coaching staff as they prepare for the season opener against Iowa State on Nov. 10. They’ll hold two closed scrimmages before then.

“I thought the effort was there, but I thought we had a lot of breakdowns defensively,” Martin says. “I thought we didn’t do a very good job until the last five or six minutes of the game. That’s fine, because in a game like this, there is a lot of film to look at, a lot of things to learn and also things that we as a staff need to spend more time on.”

Of course, the inevitable question is whether the Tigers and Jayhawks will square up on a regular basis. “I thought you were going to let me out of here without asking that,” Martin joked at his post-game press conference. “Of course, we would love to play the game. It’s a great program, and Bill has done a tremendous job. But both sides have to agree upon something like that. We saw the energy behind it. We’ll see. I think we did enough on both sides that it possibly could happen.”

Stay tuned.

Photos by Nick Mebruer

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Perspective has helped shape the career of Mizzou's Cuonzo Martin

Through adversity and a cancer diagnosis, one unwavering theme has persisted in Cuonzo Martin’s life: continued perspective.

When you’ve been tasked with rebuilding a major-college basketball program, it’s important to have perspective. Cuonzo Martin has a Ph.D. in it. He grew up on the crime-ridden, drug-infested streets of East St. Louis, Illinois. In 1991, he arrived at Purdue on a knee so unstable that the medical staff questioned whether he would ever play for the Boilermakers. And at 26, he wondered whether he’d live to see his next birthday after a doctor diagnosed him with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“For me, losing was tough, as a player and a coach,” Martin says. “Then you understand there are bigger things in life. Learn from the losses and keep moving. Applaud the wins when you get them. Value life itself, and don’t take the little things for granted. Every birthday is important because there’s no guarantee there will be one next year.”

Resurrect a program that over the previous three seasons was 27-68? No sweat. That’s the job facing Martin, who on March 20 was introduced as the 19th coach in Missouri basketball history. After head-coaching gigs at Missouri State, Tennessee and California, he is essentially coming home to a team that is on NCAA probation, has APR concerns and is lean on talent. Or at least was.

Basketball programs are rarely turned around in the spring and summer, but the Tigers are making an awfully good go at it. Already, the resurgence has been nothing short of remarkable — think a snowball rolling down the mountain, as Missouri athletic director Jim Sterk puts it.

On the morning of March 15, PowerMizzou.com reported that the Porters — Michael Sr., Michael Jr. and Jontay — were yearning to come home. They had left Columbia in 2016 for the Pacific Northwest. Dad had accepted a job as an assistant coach at the University of Washington; Michael Jr., the No. 1 recruit in the 2017 class, had signed a letter of intent with Washington; and Jontay, a five-star talent in the ’18 class, had committed to the program as well. On that March afternoon, Missouri announced Martin’s hiring; hours later, Washington fired coach Lorenzo Romar. In a matter of days, Washington released Michael Jr. from his letter of intent, Michael Sr. accepted a job as an assistant coach on Martin’s staff, and, as Missouri fans waited in anticipation, Michael Jr. announced his commitment to the Tigers, tweeting: “Mizzou Nation, I’m coming home!!!” (Jontay, a 6-foot, 11-inch power forward, took his official visit on April 24-25 and committed soon thereafter. On August 9, he announced he was reclassifying and would join his brother on the court this season.)

The good news kept coming: On April 3, combo guard C.J. Roberts, a four-star prospect from North Richland Hills, Texas, said he would not ask out of the letter of intent he had signed in the fall of 2016. Six days later, at the end of his official visit, point guard Blake Harris, a three-star recruit from Raleigh, North Carolina, committed to the Tigers. Harris, like Porter, had originally signed with Washington. On May 3, Kassius Robertson, a sharp-shooting graduate transfer from Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, came on board.

Meanwhile, Porter Jr. put on his recruiting hat, encouraging other elite players to join him in Columbia. Jeremiah Tilmon, a four-star center from East St. Louis, was granted his release from Illinois. He committed to Mizzou on May 15. The biggest surprise involved Kevin Knox II, a 6-foot, 8-inch wing from Tampa who was on the same visit with Harris and Porter Jr. The ninth-ranked recruit in the country, Knox had been courted for two years by bluebloods Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina, along with Florida State, where his father played football. Missouri had been in the picture for a mere three weeks when Martin, with an assist from Porter Jr., persuaded Knox to use his last official visit on a trip to Columbia. He was in town with his parents on the same weekend as Harris and Porter, and the welcome the three stars received from students was overwhelming. Although Knox tweeted on May 6 that he would attend Kentucky, Harris, after indicating that a decision wasn’t imminent, came away so impressed that he committed before the weekend was over.

“I’ve never seen anything like that on a campus I’ve been a part of as a player or a coach,” says Martin. So what’s the attraction? What about Cuonzo Martin is so appealing to the players and their parents?

Roberts is an interesting case study. He had fallen in love with Mizzou and Columbia during a visit last year. “I know you want me to visit Georgia and LSU,” Craig Roberts recalls his son saying. “I’ll go, but I know I’m coming here.” C.J. signed his letter of intent in November.

But he signed on believing he would play for Kim Anderson. Craig Roberts has met a lot of college basketball coaches during the 22 years he has worked on the AAU summer circuit. Martin wasn’t one of them, so Roberts understandably had his reservations. Like any good parent, he conducted background checks. Everyone kept saying the same thing: Cuonzo is going to be great for your son. (Some coaches even reached out unsolicited.) Still, Roberts needed more reassurance that he could trust Martin. So he convened a meeting with Martin at Richland High School and invited, among others, C.J.’s coach, Richard Bacon, and his long-time trainer, Donny Beacham. Martin got his message across.

“He was very straightforward, very matter-of-fact,” Craig Roberts says. “He did not waver. He told C.J., ‘There are going to be some days when you don’t like me too much because I’m going to be all over you. But I know, and you’re going to know, that I still love you. I’m not afraid to put my arm around you and hug you and tell you I love you.’

“He told C.J. he was going to get what he earns. If you earn 30 minutes, you’re going to get 30 minutes. If you earn 20 shots, you’re going to get 20 shots. If you don’t earn it, you don’t get it.”

Going back to early 2017, it was the worst-kept secret in college basketball that Missouri might be in the market for a new coach. Never mind the run of defeats. The program was bleeding money. As recently as two years ago, the empty seats at Mizzou Arena had resulted in a $2.3 million loss in ticket sales alone. The Tigers were 5-7 and had suffered home losses to North Carolina Central, Eastern Illinois and Lipscomb when Sterk issued a press release on January 4. “I clearly understand where our program is currently, and rest assured that we are all disappointed with where we stand entering SEC play,” he said.

As he kept one eye on the basketball court, Sterk began working behind the scenes, putting together a list of prospective candidates. He leaned on a couple of coaches at his previous stops — Steve Fisher at San Diego State and Tony Bennett, then of Washington State and now the coach at Virginia. He used a family connection to pick the brain of Mike White at Florida; White’s brother, Brian, is a senior associate athletic director at Mizzou. The preliminary work gave Sterk a better feel for the market. Research in hand, he went to the Board of Curators and outlined what kind of money he’d need if he decided to make a change. It wasn’t going to be cheap.

“I knew we had to have that done ahead of time, otherwise, we might not get somebody,” Sterk says. He recalls the message he delivered to the board and university leadership: “We’re going to have to get out of our comfort zone a little bit if we want a sitting Power Five [conference] coach.”

Though it wasn’t announced until the end of the regular season, Sterk informed Anderson he was out after a February 25 loss at Ole Miss. The wheels were set in motion. And as he began his covert search for what would be his first significant hire at Mizzou, Sterk knew what his budget was.

“Once you’re in the middle of it, there are piranhas out there,” he says. “It’s a good thing we did [get approval], because we were able to put our best foot forward with Cuonzo. I had the security of knowing the board was supportive of what I was doing. I knew what my offer could be. That helped us beat Illinois. Cal came back at him as well.”

Martin didn’t come cheaply: $21 million over seven years. It’s what the market dictated. Plus, the fact that the Board of Curators authorized Sterk to spend that kind of money spoke to the university’s commitment to making basketball relevant again.

Naturally, Sterk kicked the tires on other candidates, but his search kept coming back to Martin. He came highly recommended by his peers and those for whom he had worked. Sandy Barber had hired Martin at Cal in 2014. She’s now the athletic director at Penn State. Close friends, she and Sterk had started together as associate athletic directors at Tulane. As the president at Missouri State, Mike Nietzel had given Martin his first head-coaching opportunity, in 2008. The two remain friends to this day. The more people Sterk contacted, the more sold he became. Most appealing was that he never ran across anyone who had a bad thing to say about Martin.

“I was really impressed that he had been a head coach at three institutions, and he had a great background,” Sterk says. “Every place got better. Every place wanted to keep him. He had been hardened under some adversity. He had gone through some personal stuff, with cancer and where he grew up. He was giving back to the community.”

Then there were the intangibles: Martin was born and raised in the shadow of the Arch. He has local recruiting connections. “That was an added bonus that could really help us begin to make better inroads into the St. Louis area and all of Missouri,” Sterk says.

David Lee, Tyler Hansbrough, Brandon Rush, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, Ben McLemore, OG Anunoby, Jason Tatum: You could field a pretty salty team with the litany of stars who have escaped the state over the past 15 years. Martin and his staff will recruit nationally if not globally, but the foundation can be built by persuading talented kids to stay close to home.

Enter Michael Porter Jr. When the family packed up and moved to Seattle, all indications were that Mizzou had let the biggest of stars escape. But time away helped the family realize just how much they missed Columbia. That news was relayed to Sterk in February by women’s basketball coach Robin Pingeton. It was yet another family connection: Pingeton’s sister, Lisa, is married to Michael Sr.; Pingeton also coaches Bri and Cierra Porter, and Michael Sr. had previously worked on her staff as an assistant coach.

Because the Porters had left town before he came on board, Sterk had never seen Michael Jr. play. Google became his friend. “I got really excited about that possibility,” Sterk says. “I couldn’t imagine this working out as well as it has. I had hoped we would create some momentum and an opportunity to get Michael, but I didn’t know what kind of recruiter he was. To have someone of his stature is great — No. 1 recruit in the country, McDonald’s All-American. He’s just a real genuine kid, and he understands how he can be better by having better players around him. He was the wild card I didn’t envision.”

As of mid-April, season ticket sales were up almost 1,500, a number that has been growing daily. Based on feedback from the Board of Curators and others in St. Louis and Kansas City, Sterk senses a really good feeling around the state.

Gabe DeArmond, the publisher of PowerMizzou.com, has the numbers to quantify the spike in enthusiasm. From March 5 to March 30, average page views on his site doubled over the week before Anderson stepped down. March saw a 41 percent increase in page views, and subscribers spent 72 percent more time on the site than in February. As for message posts — because, after all, everyone wants to tell Sterk and Martin how to do their jobs — March had 21,000 more posts than February and 10,000 more than any other month in the past year. It’s been good for business too. “I can tell you that in the calendar month after Kim Anderson’s resignation, we’ve never added more subscribers over a 31-day period,” DeArmond says.

The draw, of course, is Porter, a fluid 6-foot, 10-inch wing who can do it all. Among other things, scouts rave about his length, the elevation he gets on his jump shot, his ability to play inside and out and his three-point range. He is the first overall pick in more than one 2018 NBA mock draft.

“First and foremost, as far as his off-the-court attributes, you have to give a lot of credit to his parents,” Martin says. “They put him in a great position to be a successful young man, not just in sports but in life. You can see his humility, his ability to embrace other young guys. He understands how to have love and compassion for other people. As far as his ability to play the game, again his mom and dad did a great job of putting him in the position, working on his shot. Here’s a guy, 6-10 or 6-11, the way he shoots the ball, the way he handles the ball — obviously his parents did a great job in his development.”

The Tigers will play fast, because that’s the way kids want to play these days. Assistant coaches Cornell Mann and Chris Hollender will oversee the offense. Most recently an assistant at Oakland (Michigan), Mann plans to install a system not unlike the one run by Iowa State when he was an assistant in Ames from 2011-15. Martin chuckles at those who label it an NBA-style offense.

“Everybody says NBA-style because it sounds good, but what does that really mean?” he asks. “We’re playing with a 30-second shot clock, so when you hear ‘NBA-style,’ you say, ‘Which NBA team is that?’ We’ll try to generate more offense, put guys in position to score in the first seven to 10 seconds of the shot clock. If not, execute your offense.”

With the assistance of Porter Sr., Martin will coach up the defense because, well, that’s what he does best. It’s a mindset and toughness he undoubtedly adopted growing up in East St. Louis and as a disciple of Purdue coach Gene Keady. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Martin even has a little Norm Stewart in his philosophy. “I get so consumed with the defensive side of the ball,” Martin says. “That part will never change. You have to have that to be successful.”

How does he measure success? Martin is not a goal-setter in the strict sense of the word, but he knows what the expectations are: Get into the NCAA tournament, then play late into March, if not April. He believes the Tigers aren’t far off, that even on a team that finished 8-24 last season, there are pieces to build around. Throw in the influx of talent and the fact that the SEC gauntlet is not overly daunting, and the turnaround can be swift. Look at TCU, which went from 12-21 in 2015-16 to an NCAA tournament bubble team and NIT champs under first-year coach Jamie Dixon. Craig Roberts points to the dramatic resurgence at SMU. So at the same time he preaches patience, Martin doesn’t want the fans, and especially the students, to temper expectations.

“Our fans have had some tough times in the past several years,” he says. “So we want those people to be excited about what we’re doing, because that means there’s passion and enthusiasm. It’s our job to be entertainers on the court. We need to work as hard as we can to be consistently successful. The energy [among fans] is good. That’s the same thing we talk to our players about. We’re better people with more energy and enthusiasm.”

Martin would have loved to come to Columbia when he was a candidate for the job in 2011, and who knows what state the program would be in had that happened. Now he arrives with six more years of experience, 205 games on his résumé, and lessons learned on and off the court.

“The experience and the wisdom of going through something over the course of time helps you develop as a coach and a leader — making mistakes when you coach in games, learning from those mistakes, beating big programs early in your career and understanding how you beat those programs, developing young men, and allowing your staff to be a part of what you’re doing, not just recruiting, but the whole piece: the video recording, scouting, watching film, developing student-athletes. You need everybody to be successful,” Martin says.

It helps when you can maintain perspective. Martin was a sophomore at Purdue when he walked into an Arby’s in West Lafayette, Indiana, on the first weekend of the 1992 school year. It was by chance that he bumped into Roberta Jones, the woman who would become the love of his life. “I like to tell the story that she came up to introduce herself to me, but she tells it totally differently,” he says with a laugh. “So we’ll take her version.”

Wooing Roberta was his first — and biggest — recruiting coup. The courtship lasted almost three years; they were married on June 14, 1995. Son Joshua arrived two years later. Martin was doing what he loved most — playing basketball. Life was good. And then came the cancer diagnosis, the discovery of a four-inch tumor, the news that his odds of beating the disease weren’t good, and four months of strength-sapping chemotherapy treatments. Martin might not be one for setting goals, but he made one then: to see his son turn 18. Joshua was four months old.

“If you listen to that story and aren’t inspired,” DeArmond says, “then you’ve got no soul.”

Martin had his last treatment and was declared cancer-free on April 20, 1998. You remember the dates. “Those dates are like Christmas to me,” he says. “I remember them vividly.” Today, Joshua is a 19-year-old freshman at Purdue. Chase is 15, and daughter Addison is 9.

“I’ll never forget when the doc said it’s life-threatening,” Martin says. “And you’re sitting there wondering, Will I be here tomorrow? That’s why I said you try to applaud those little things in life. Often you can’t get them back.”

The first game of the Cuonzo Martin era at Mizzou is still three months away, but in a short time he has electrified a fan base and put Missouri basketball back on the map. It’s remarkable when you think about it. He and his staff have hit the recruiting trail hard. He has traveled around the state conducting countless interviews while spreading his message. Not everyone has the talent of Michael Porter Jr., so while Martin talks about basketball, he also stresses the importance of developing young men and enriching their lives. Authentic — that’s the word that comes to mind.

And perspective.

Photos: Mizzou Athletics 

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Laurence Bowers was nervous.

It’s rare for Bowers to feel angst by the way he embraces change. He prefers one-year contracts because he wants to explore different cities around the world. Two days ago, he inked a deal overseas with his fifth team in the past five years. The upcoming season in Italy is a new experience — he doesn’t know what to expect, but that’s part of what keeps him excited.

But a day before the first ever Carroll and Bowers Alumni Game, Bowers didn’t know what to expect and it was making him anxious.

“I’m nervous,” he says. “I don’t know why.”

The attendance of the game wouldn’t necessarily dictate how Bowers felt about the event, but it was the biggest thing on his mind the day before tip-off. He sacrificed time with his wife, Feven, and their five-month-old daughter, Fiyora, to organize the alumni game after he and fellow alum DeMarre Carroll thought up the idea a few years ago.

“We tried to think of a way to get guys (alumni) to come back and support the university,” Bowers says. “I love Columbia, and I feel like there’s a lot of kids here that need excitement.”

Bowers was born in Tennessee and, as he says himself, “You can take me out of Memphis, but you can’t take Memphis out of me.” He’s played professional basketball in Italy and Israel for the past four years, but Columbia, Missouri, is home for the Tennessean during the offseason. He feels the need to give back to the city that shaped him into who he is today.

“I literally grew into a man at Mizzou,” Bowers says. “During my five years here, I received an unbelievable amount of support from fans to students that I went to school with. They embraced me as a man, not just as a basketball player.”

Bowers credits Columbia for his growth, and he knows a lot of his fellow Tigers feel the same way. It’s why he felt compelled to organize the game for local non-profits like the Boys & Girls Clubs of Columbia and Granny’s House, along with The Carroll Family Foundation. It’s also why he felt nervous a day before the event — he had an opportunity to help his community and had no idea what the response would be.

“I’m nervous that the turn out is not going to be what we expected or whatever.”

Bowers didn’t put an exact number on how many people he thought would attend, but minutes after the game, it was obvious whether or not his expectations were met.

“I’m just overwhelmed with joy that all these people showed up to support us,” Bowers exclaimed after the final whistle. “I’m so excited right now, I’ve got to calm down a little bit.”

The thousands in attendance shared the excitement with Bowers and his 26 fellow alumni, which included both former basketball and football players.

The game was the first of its kind, but it was filled with classic memories. Former guard and University of Missouri Hall of Famer Melvin Booker received a standing ovation during his introduction and hit three’s that reminded fans of when he led Missouri to a 14-0 conference record in 1994. Former guard Ricky Paulding threw down a vicious tomahawk, flashing signs of his dunks from the early-2000’s. Former forward Ricardo Ratliffe scored a game-high 39 points, grabbed 13 rebounds, took home the game’s MVP award and showed us the strength he used in his senior season to lead Mizzou to a Big 12 tournament championship.

Mizzou’s football alumni also provided moments fans wouldn’t have a chance to see on Faurot Field. Former wide receiver Jerrell Jackson caught lob after lob, throwing down dunk after dunk. Meanwhile, former linebacker Sean Weatherspoon handled point guard duties and threw up jumpers.

As the game came to an end, the players cleared the floor for Bowers, who threw down a vicious dunk for the final play of the contest.

Team Carroll beat Team Bowers 137-116, but the final score didn’t mean as much to the players as the impact of the game itself.

“It wasn’t about the win or loss for me,” Bowers, who finished with 21 points, says. “Ultimately, we all won. I’m just overwhelmed with joy that all these people showed up to support us, that all these guys came back and helped me and DeMarre put on this event.”

“Missouri is my home,” Carroll, who didn’t play, says. “We need to show other young individuals that you can be great coming to Mizzou. You can achieve your dreams, you can be in the NBA and the NFL, and that’s what we’re doing right now.”

“I became a man in this city, and the fans embraced me,” Booker says. “I was just a small kid from Mississippi, and they pretty much raised me here.”

“The whole city of Columbia, we’re still one big family,” former center Steve Moore says. “When I was done playing, the people here [in Columbia] didn’t just tell me, but they showed me that they’re here for me.”

“There were a couple of professors I saw, a couple of people in the athletic department that I knew really well, and just seeing a lot of guys that I haven’t seen in a long time. Laurence said it best — this is definitely a second home for all of us,” former guard Jarrett Sutton says.

Joining the thousands of Tiger fans in attendance were most of the current men’s basketball team, including incoming freshman Michael Porter Jr., a Columbia native who is also the highest-ranked player nationwide in his class. Bowers has known Porter Jr. and his brother, Jontay, since he was ten years old — he calls him his “little big brother.”

“They [Michael and Jontay] used to literally be in the gym too much,” Bowers says. “There were times where I’d be like, ‘Who are these kids? Get them off so I can shoot’ But, hey, it’s paying off for them.”

It’s also paying off for Mizzou men’s basketball. After the hiring of head coach Cuonzo Martin and the recruitment of several freshmen standouts, Mizzou basketball fans are holding their breath and hoping for the Tigers’ first appearance in the NCAA Tournament since 2013.

But months before anyone in town knew this program would be back on the map, Bowers teamed up with Carroll to craft a way to do it on their own.

“This game was well thought out before the Cuonzo era and before the basketball gods blessed us with a 6’11, No. 1 overall recruit,” Bowers says. “Cuonzo Martin came, then Michael Porter, Blake Harris, all that stuff happened, and now, I think we’re more so adding to what’s already there, and that’s good. It’s a great time for the school.”

“I’m glad that DeMarre and I got together to do something like this because our university needed it. This is what it’s all about. It’s not the glitz and the glam, but it’s about what we can do for the University of Missouri and the city of Columbia.”

As Bowers admits, the excitement for the resurgence of basketball in Columbia was already looming. But the success of the first Carroll and Bowers Alumni Game remind fans of the passion that’s always surrounded this program. Bowers is just glad that he could be a part of its resurgence.

Photos by Emil Lippe

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