Jordan Geist is Mizzou basketball’s “killer” point guard

Soon after Cuonzo Martin became Missouri’s head basketball coach, he received a text from Caleb Swanigan, who, like Martin, played at Purdue.

MU’s new coach had not yet scouted the roster he was inheriting, but he’s known Swanigan since the now-Portland Trail Blazer rookie was just a boy, so Martin trusted his word. Swanigan had a strong opinion about one of Martin’s new players, one of Swanigan’s friends: Mizzou guard Jordan Geist.

“He texted me,” Martin said of Swanigan. “He said — what was the word? — you’ve got a ‘killer’ in Geist.”

Martin, whose team is 8-2 and faces North Florida on Saturday, has since developed his own opinion of Geist, a junior. And it’s pretty similar to Swanigan’s.

“He’ll bite you,” Martin said. “... When he steps on the floor, it doesn’t matter. He’s looking down at you, up at you. It’s competition, and he’s not phased by your size or your skill or what you bring to the table. He’s trying to win the game. He’ll battle. I think that’s the thing that separates him from a lot of people.”

Missouri’s players have said their defensive-minded head coach has a ultra-demanding level of intensity to him. Some have never seen that type intensity out of any other coach. So there might not be a player more fit for Martin’s style than Geist, who scored a career high 28 points in Mizzou’s win over Green Bay last weekend but likens himself as more of an “enforcer” who comes off the bench for the Tigers.

Asked about Geist after practice Thursday, forward Jordan Barnett thought about Missouri’s game at Georgia last season, when the Tigers and Bulldogs got into a shoving match. Geist “essentially started the fight,” Barnett said.

“He wouldn’t have been where he is right now if I hadn’t been that crazy dad in a second grade soccer game saying, ‘Get up,’” the point guard’s father, Scott Geist, said.

Scott Geist admitted that some people might think his parenting style was “a little over the top,” but he made sure that his son learned early on that there was a “difference between hurt and injured.”

Jordan Geist realized he had more to learn about that when he went to junior college and played for coach Billy Gillispie at Ranger College, about two hours west of Dallas.

When Geist had a staph infection in his elbow, Gillispie, once the head coach at Kentucky and Texas A&M, told the point guard’s father that his son wasn’t being tough enough. Geist had to get surgery on his elbow and was in the hospital for three days, his dad said, but he came back to play almost immediately after he was released.

Geist believes Gillispie prepared him to play for Martin, a coach who demands that his point guards defend the length of the court and often spends his press conferences after wins pointing out what he didn’t like about his players.

“Coach Martin hasn’t put a lid on Jordan whatsoever as to what he can be as a player,” forward Kevin Puryear said. “I love that out of him. I think everybody on this team really has some type of mean streak in him. Jordan being as nasty, the pest that he is, I think is extremely helpful to the team and what he brings to the table.”

Geist is one of three true point guards on Mizzou’s roster. Junior Terrence Phillips and freshman Blake Harris are the other two. Martin said he doesn’t like to continuously tweak lineups, and Harris has continued to start games — but Geist is averaging the most minutes of the three (18.5). He said he’s happy coming off the bench.

After shooting 28.6 percent on three-pointers a season ago, Geist has made 13 of his 27 attempts from deep so far this season. That’s 48.1 percent.

He said he took about 40,000 shots over the summer, most of which were three-pointers, and he removed an awkward hitch in his jump shot. He felt he would need to prove himself to a new coaching staff.

Sure, he had Swanigan advocating for him. But Jordan Geist doesn’t mind forcing the issue.

This story was originally published December 15, 2017 at 6:09 PM with the headline "Jordan Geist is Mizzou basketball’s “killer” point guard."