Why Kevin Puryear never left Missouri despite the losing and a coaching change

Kevin Puryear is three weeks away from starting his final basketball season at Missouri, and he already knows what he wants his lasting legacy to be. Rather than have fans remember him for national accolades or as a 1,000-point scorer, Puryear wants to be remembered for his presence during a time the program struggled and went through a big transition.

Puryear, a Blue Springs South graduate, will be Missouri’s first four-year player since 2016, when Ryan Rosburg graduated. Puryear will be just the second four-year player since Laurence Bowers finished his MU career in 2013.

“Hopefully people remember me as the guy that stayed around when things got hard,” he told The Star at SEC Tipoff on Wednesday. “That continued to fight, was part of the turnaround and success at Mizzou.”

Puryear signed up to be part of a rebuild when he committed to Missouri in August 2014. The Tigers had just lost of pair of players to the NBA in Jabari Brown and Jordan Clarkson, and new coach Kim Anderson would be leaning on unproven players.

As Puryear led Blue Springs South to a state title his senior year, Anderson won just nine games in his inaugural season at Mizzou. Puryear’s friends questioned whether he was making the right choice. Nebraska and Mississippi had offered him scholarships. Maybe one of those options was better. Maybe just about everything was better than playing for Missouri at that time.

And Puryear kept his commitment. He had grown up up watching Zaire Taylor and Marcus Denmon. Missouri was his dream school.

“From afar I definitely knew what I was getting myself into — not really having any (success to start my career).” Yet he believed he could be part of a turnaround, “something special.”

He quickly realized how hard that would be. When he arrived in summer of 2015, some Tiger frontcourt players viewed him as someone taking minutes from them, rather than competition or a partial solution to Missouri’s problem.

It took him time to build chemistry with the team, and his mindset of always trying to do more had him calling home frequently, frustrated that he wasn’t adjusting to the college game quicker.

“When I first got there I thought it was going to be smooth sailing,” he said. “There was definitely a learning curve for me.”

Puryear eventually readjusted his expectations after realizing his standards needed to be practical for his first college season.

As a freshman he led the team in scoring with 11.5 points per game and was a member of the all-SEC freshman team. But as his stats suggested the start of a budding career, the team remained in last place in the SEC. Anderson’s second season at MU mirrored his first. The team went 10-21, with most of those losses being blowouts.

A turnaround didn’t appear to be coming. Attrition is natural in college sports, but at Missouri it was a plague.

“He’s the one that’s been through it all,” current Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin said.

Including this season’s roster, Puryear will have played with roughly 40 teammates during his collegiate career. Some were kicked off after suspensions, while others left on their own.

Even though some departures were addition by subtraction, it still remained a challenge to establish a winning culture and build chemistry when the locker room was constantly changing.

“Every year you have to start from scratch,” Puryear said. “You have new people coming in every year, eight to nine guys transferring or getting kicked out. We could never get our feet under us.”

Puryear had never experienced losing like that. He didn’t know how to cope with the disappointment. College athletes, especially good ones, are some of the most recognizable figures on a campus, but Puryear wanted none of that. He often sat in the back of restaurants, away from view while wearing a hood or a baseball cap.

He said he’s not one to open up to people and he hides his frustrations because of his pride. Only his mother and some friends can tell when he’s very upset. Besides, he was still a scholarship athlete.

Puryear said Missouri’s 13-game losing streak during his sophomore season marked the lowest point. As the losses piled up, he continued to spend more time in the gym, hoping it would yield better results. When things didn’t change, he didn’t know what to do.

“That hit him hard,” said Kendall Blanton, a Missouri tight end and Puryear’s teammate at Blue Springs South. “He wasn’t used to that. He felt in some ways he wasn’t doing enough to help his team win.”

When Missouri announced that the 2016-17 season would be Anderson’s last as the coach, Puryear started to consider the possibility of transferring to a different school. But first, Puryear wanted to see who Missouri athletic director Jim Sterk would hire as the next coach.

The Puryear was on vacation with his family in San Antonio in March 2017 when Missouri named Martin the next coach. Hours after the news broke, word spread that top recruit Michael Porter Jr. could be coming back to Columbia to join Martin.

While Puryear felt relieved about the hiring of Martin, because of his track record and local ties, the news about Porter Jr. brought a recruiting boom that the program had never experienced before. As speculation spread about which blue-chip recruits could be joining Porter Jr., Puryear found himself “consumed in” what might happen next. He scoured through Twitter to find out which recruits could be visiting MU. Then he researched their playing styles.

It was easy to wonder how he might fit into a potential NCAA Tournament team, and Puryear spent so much time wrapped up in the Tigers’ recruiting frenzy that he deleted social media for a few weeks to get away from it.

As Missouri added the likes of Jeremiah Tilmon, Jontay Porter and Kassius Robertson, Puryear appeared to be the Anderson holdover whose role would change the most.

Rather than leave, Puryear decided to finish what he started, a value his parents had embedded in him.

Puryear remembers his first football practice in the fourth grade and his desire to quit the sport after taking a hard hit his first practice.

“You asked me to sign you up, so you have to finish it,” his mother told him.

He spent the first half of his time at Missouri losing, but immediate success appeared in the forecast. Why leave now?

“He hung in there because he loves that school,” Puryear’s mother, Vicki, said.

It turned out Missouri would need Puryear more than he thought last season. After Porter Jr. left the 2017-18 season-opener against Iowa State before ultimately undergoing back surgery, Puryear led the team with 17 points in the win. He started 26 of the 33 games he played in and averaged 8.6 points per game.

But even as Missouri clinched its first NCAA Tournament berth in five years, Puryear experienced drama.

Missouri had two players transfer in the first semester, and uncertainty swirled all season about whether Porter would recover in time to play late in the year. Point guard Terrence Phillips also has a Title IX investigation on him, which ultimately led to his dismissal.

“The drama was worse than the first two years put together,” Vicki Puryear said.

Kevin will graduate with a sports marketing degree in December, and he believes he will be ready for whatever happens next because of all that came before.

“Life is going to throw me all types of curveballs,” he said. “I got a lot of curveball those first two years.”

When he first committed to the school, Puryear promised to help bring Missouri back to the glory years that he grew up watching.

He’ll have a chance to lead Missouri to its second-consecutive NCAA Tournament this season on a team led by him, Tilmon and Jontay Porter.

Despite leaving the program better than he found it, Puryear isn’t ready to say he’s kept his promise.

“They picked us to finish ninth (in the SEC preseason poll),” he said. “I don’t think we’re completely back yet.”

Now he’ll have a chance to help the Tigers get there, the only place he’s ever wanted to be.