Italian Basketball Champion Laurence Bowers Continues Youth Basketball Tradition

Laurence Bowers has always been a renaissance man. A portrait artist and a singer — his college vocal group once opened for fellow Mizzou alumnus Kareem Rush who performed at Columbia’s Blue Note in 2011 — Bowers also plays piano, runs a youth basketball foundation and delivers motivational speeches at various engagements throughout the year. So perhaps it’s appropriate that his professional basketball career took him to the historic era’s cradle in Italy where he plays for Pallacanestro Trieste, the reigning champions of Lega Basket Serie A.

As one might expect of a gentleman with varied interests, Bowers has savored his time in Europe like an aromatic plate of cappellacci (pumpkin-stuffed pasta) in Bolognese sauce — his favorite Italian dish. “It’s great the paths you cross playing basketball and what the sport allows you to see,” says Bowers, whose Mizzou days spanned 2008–13. “Basketball fans in Italy are amazing and crazy and extremely passionate. They’ll even try to fight each other during games.”

Bowers has parleyed his international success into Camp Bowers, a youth basketball clinic hosted by Rock Bridge High School in Columbia. Bowers started the camp, now in its fourth year, as a way to “pay it forward” in honor of mentors who helped him as a youngster growing up in Memphis, Tennessee. Camp Bowers runs July 9–11. Campers receive an official basketball and T-shirt, in addition to top-notch instruction from Mizzou’s runner up in career blocked shots (behind Arthur Johnson). Other past and present Missouri Tigers will be in attendance.

“The thing I’m most proud of was that I was able to get my master’s degree [in education] in five years,” says Bowers, MU basketball’s only scholarship player to earn a graduate degree during his NCAA career. “I was a pretty good student, but I had a good woman behind me.”

Bowers means his wife Feven whom he met in 2009 at The Field House, the popular college hangout in Columbia. The couple married in 2015 and welcomed daughter Fiyori in January 2017. “Becoming a husband and a father is motivating,” says Bowers, who proposed to Feven in 2013 at half-court of Mizzou Arena. “You want to do well for yourself so you can live a decent, comfortable life. But when you add the responsibility of providing for your wife and your daughter, it’s like taking a 5-hour Energy drink. I’m always thinking, I’ve got to do better. I’ve got to push myself. I’ve got to go harder.”

Bowers has continued his work for local charities during his five-year international career (two seasons in Israel, three in Italy). Fans might remember the Carroll and Bowers Alumni Game, with proceeds going to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Columbia and Granny’s House. And black-and-gold faithful certainly remember Bowers’ graduating class — a star-studded group including Kim English and Marcus Denmon — that finished with 107 career wins, the most of any class in Mizzou history.

“I love Mizzou,” Bowers says. “It was the best five years of my life besides having my daughter. I wish I could still play for Mizzou and get paid the money I make now.”

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It’s a hot midsummer day in Columbia, and former Mizzou basketball star Laurence Bowers sits in the waiting area of MU Health Care’s Human Performance Institute (HPI) while head trainer, Garrett Buschjost, prepares the day’s workout at the front desk. Since Bowers began training with Buschjost in 2014, the HPI facility has become a key component of the 27-year-old power forward’s continued success at the professional level. He returned to Columbia this summer after averaging 20.2 points and 8.6 rebounds with Italy’s Bondi Ferrara during the 2016-17 season.

“[As a] professional, you have to be very specific with who and what you want to do regarding training,” Bowers says. “[Buschjost] knows the basketball specifics that I need to better my career.”

In a typical offseason, Buschjost says he’ll train with Bowers around 20 times. The first month of the training block is typically kept at a low intensity and volume and includes exercises that are designed to push Bowers’ body back to a state that Buschjost describes as “good.”

Bowers, who has spent the past five years playing professionally in Israel and Italy, has seen his game improve each season in part because of this mindset. In the past, particularly during his career as a Tiger, he sustained and recovered from a variety of injuries, the most severe in 2012, when he was sidelined for the season with an ACL tear.

“He just came back from playing 30 or more games at a very high level,” Buschjost says. “Plus the practice and traveling that goes along with it — his body is feeling the effects of that.” Getting back to “good” is an important start.

Bowers says Buschjost’s training is a key component of his increased durability as a professional. “[Buschjost] has been a big part of why I haven’t had any injuries,” Bowers says. “We trained last year, and I had the best season I’ve ever had. I give him a lot of credit for that, just keeping me in tip-top shape.”

During the first several summer sessions, Bowers and Buschjost work together to detect and prevent any imbalances or minor aches and pains from developing before they become a larger issue. Prior to increasing the intensity or workload in the weight room, Bowers must first be able to reliably move in all planes of motion, ideally without experiencing any lingering pain or restriction. Each session begins (and concludes) with Bowers utilizing the facility’s recovery devices, from the standard foam roller to Dynavision, an electronic light board that works on hand-eye coordination.

From there, he’ll work through a variety of movement patterns and dynamic warmups before starting the day’s basketball-specific work, which, depending on the day, can include anything from plyometrics to resistance and speed-development training. Overall, Bowers feels like he’s at home when he’s training at HPI. And although he plays overseas, Columbia, Missouri, is home for the Memphis native during the offseason.

“A lot of times when I go to the gym, it’s serious. It’s all about putting in the work,” Bowers says. “But here at HPI, everyone is like family to one another. We all come in, we smile and crack jokes, but we also get after it.”

Outside the gym, Bowers is arguably even busier day-to-day. He’s offered his own youth basketball camp series, Camp Bowers, for the past three summers, and dedicates much of his free time to local charities, including the Boys and Girls Club of Columbia. This is his community. It’s why he teamed up with DeMarre Carroll for the first Carroll and Bowers Alumni Game this past July. Bowers has found the wisdom that follows experience. As a husband, and father to daughter Fiyori, he continues to learn. “Having your own, you start to see how much a kid depends on adults,” Bowers says, adding that Fiyori has already made him a better mentor and role model at his camps. He knows he’s surrounding himself with the tools and people he needs to succeed.

“I’ve got good people in my corner,” Bowers says. “Not good people in the sense that they always want to have a good time, but good people in the sense that they always push to make me a better person.”

Photos by Travis Smith 

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With an incoming freshmen class loaded with the likes of Michael Porter Jr., C.J. Roberts, Jeremiah Tilmon and Blake Harris, it’s nearly impossible to criticize the recruiting that Cuonzo Martin and his staff have done thus far.

But the MU Men’s Basketball program isn’t done yet.

Five-star power forward Jontay Porter is on his way to play for MU. In other words, the 6-foot, 9-inch, 225-pound Columbia native is coming back home. Porter grew up playing basketball with Tigers of the past, like during practices to the joking dismay of Laurence Bowers. He now joins his brother, Michael, Jr., to round out Cuonzo Martin’s first recruiting class as the Tigers head coach — not a bad start, huh?

Jontay is the No. 12 ranked prospect in the country on the Rivals 150 rankings for the class of 2018. But by reclassifying, he’s graduating high school a year early to play for Mizzou in what would be his senior year of high school. Mizzou fans … confused yet? We’re undoubtedly glad that it’s happening, but how exactly is it possible?

Reclassifying can mean a few things for high school athletes: making a conscious decision to be “held back”; registering with a graduating class later than his or her original with the purpose of gaining a year to develop; or, in Jontay’s case, choosing to graduate early.

Michelle B. Hosick, the associate director of NCAA public and media relations, said that as long as a student meets certain NCAA requirements, they can leave high school early and head to college.

“All incoming student-athletes must meet core course requirements set by NCAA member schools as well as earn an ACT/SAT test score that corresponds to the student’s core course GPA on the sliding scale,” Hosick said in an email.

For high school students trying to reclassify, there’s a “Sweet 16” they must conquer before even attempting to play in one. The NCAA requires 16 core courses to be completed in high school before a student is eligible to reclassify, including English, math, natural or physical science, social science, foreign language, philosophy and comparative religion.

Students are also allowed to work on core courses before ninth grade, and classes such as algebra 1 or introductory languages can even be completed before high school to count toward the required 16.

“If a student meets all of these criteria, he or she can be certified by the Eligibility Center, whether it’s with [their] graduating class or earlier,” Hosick says. “This would be akin to a high school senior graduating in December and enrolling in college for the Spring semester, just a full academic year early in this (Jontay’s) case.”

By completing that sweet (and required) 16 and earning a sufficient score on the ACT or SAT, Jontay is able to take the last scholarship Coach Martin has to offer.

And for Missouri fans, there’s no one we’d rather have accept it. Welcome home, Jontay.

Photo: Jontay Porter Twitter

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