This week in Mizzou recruiting: Were there big misses in the 2018 basketball class?

Sorry if this column seems a bit rushed. I am heading to Oxford, Miss. right after I file it and am leaving early to try and beat the snow.

Now to the goods. I’m changing it up a bit this week. I was asked this week about what were some of Missouri’s bigger recruiting misses in the 2018 basketball class, now that we’ve had some time to look at how former targets have done elsewhere. So we’re going to explore that question a bit.

Disclaimer: This season was always going to look different, regardless of who went to MU, once Jontay Porter went down. And while some players might be having success elsewhere or a lack thereof, that doesn’t mean that it would be the same situation at Missouri. Playing time, depth, chemistry, style, etc. all differ from school to school. And it’s an EARLY look. A lot will change before the class can be properly evaluated.

Got it? Now let’s try and unpack this.

Point guard

At first Missouri was in no rush to add a point guard for 2018. The Tigers opened their first season with Cuonzo Martin at the helm with Blake Harris, C.J. Roberts, Jordan Geist and Terrence Phillips. But Harris left for North Carolina State after an up-and-down half of the season, as did Roberts, who never played for MU, and then Phillips was dismissed because of a Title IX investigation.

So in February, Missouri was looking at Geist as the lone scholarship point guard for the following season and somebody had to join him for depth alone.

Missouri obviously landed Xavier Pinson, and the future appears to be bright with the point guard from Chicago.

A quick search through the Rivals.com database brings up a number of point guards MU looked at, but for the purpose of this we’re only going to discuss Courtney Ramey, Xavier Castaneda and Alex Lomax. Tyger Campbell is out for the season at UCLA because of a torn ACL.

Pinson is averaging 6.3 points, 2.5 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game. He had turnover problems early in the year but has found a time and place for the no-look passes that were either a home run or a dud.

Ramey is having a very similar year at Texas, averaging 7.2 points, 2.9 rebounds and three assists per game. He has scored a little more and had more consistent playing time than Pinson but that goes back to the disclaimer that each player has a different role in their program.

Castaneda was a name I forgot about and laugh at in hindsight. He’s another point guard from Chicago, and at a powerhouse (Whitney Young), and named Xavier. In a limited role at South Florida, he’s averaging four points, 1.4 assists and 1.6 rebounds per game. Of course he would have played a lot more at MU.

Then there’s Lomax. He’s averaging 5.5 points, 3.3 rebounds and three assists per game for Penny Hardaway’s Memphis Tigers. Even if MU landed Lomax, they still would have needed to replace him because he was always going to Memphis if Hardaway, his high school and AAU coach, got hired.

Pinson has already been better than a lot of people realized and it seems like there’s no former recruit who would have been an obvious upgrade. The 6-foot-1 point guard has been as good as any of them. While Ramey has the local connection because he’s from St. Louis, it’s not like MU doesn’t have other guys on the roster from there.

Wing

This was a position that needed addressing from the start, because Missouri was going to lose Jordan Barnett and Kassius Robertson. Javon Pickett committed to Missouri over the summer after parting ways with Illinois while Torrence Watson later flipped to MU from Ohio State.

Some other targets MU had on its radar were Talen Horton-Tucker, who is at Iowa State, and Duane Washington Jr., who signed with Ohio State.

Pickett has been a very pleasant surprise for MU, averaging 8.3 points while starting every game, while Watson is hot as of late.

Let’s start with Horton-Tucker. He’s a guy MU could have landed if they wanted to, from what I’m told, but liked other guys better. He’s been a revelation at ISU, and is currently averaging 12 points, 5.3 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game. The high school teammate of Pinson at Simeon, Horton-Tucker already has NBA teams looking at him.

In terms of production, Pickett and Watson’s stats combined are about equal to Horton-Tucker’s, so this one is tough to call. The pros could very well come calling for MU’s duo down the road if they develop. And even with Horton-Tucker, he alone doesn’t change MU’s season.

The interesting name at this position is former Oak Park star Ochai Agbaji. After having his redshirt burned at Kansas, he’s averaging 10.8 points and 5.4 rebounds per game. He’s made people wonder why Bill Self ever elected to redshirt him in the first place and has had NBA scouts calling on him.

Agbaji played AAU with Porter, so it’s not like MU never saw him, but his best offer was UMKC for a long time. He just seems to be the guy who everyone missed on. From what I’ve been told, Missouri always wanted to get to Oak Park to see him last year, but just didn’t find time before he committed to Kansas.

The future looks just as promising at the wing as it does at the point, this a position that probably had the best alternative options and local ones too.

Power forward/post

If you’ve read this long, you’ve probably been waiting for this part of the column. It’s without question that power forward and center have been very difficult positions for MU this year, given the lack of production at times from the four-spot, and the lack of depth behind Jeremiah Tilmon.

Missouri was going to replace Michael Porter Jr. from the day he stepped on campus, given the one-and-done era. Also, while Porter Jr. is more of a wing in the NBA, MU used him as more of a four at times, which is why he’s being counted here.

This position is harder to dissect more than others as well. I don’t really know how to classify Carte’Are Gordon in all of this. He was committed to Saint Louis when MU hired Martin, and while he appeared to waiver at times, he never fully decommitted. But he transferred out of SLU early on and is now at DePaul. I don’t know how well he would have fit with a coach like Martin, but he could have helped MU in terms of production, no doubt.

Cornell Mann recruited a number of forwards from Michigan, including Marcus Bingham, Brandon Johns, but both stayed home (Johns is at Michigan, Bingham signed with Michigan State) and both are playing sparingly at their respective schools. Neither have played enough yet to reasonably consider them upgrades over what MU has. Heck, even Francis Okoro, who was a borderline five-star recruit, is playing sparingly at Oregon, but he would have played a lot more with or alongside Tilmon. I don’t think he was ever coming to MU, but he would have been nice for the Tigers to have.

Now we get to the in-state guys. Jericole Hellems had an amazing summer with Bradley Beal Elite and ended up at North Carolina State, while Lee’s Summit native Christian Bishop signed with Creighton. Hellems is averaging 5.7 points and 2.8 rebounds per game while Bishop is averaging 4.1 points and 1.7 rebounds. Both don’t have stat lines like Kevin Puryear, but given their local ties and early signs of production, both could go down as notable misses.

Perhaps the most notable from this group is Ole Miss forward Blake Hinson, who chose the Rebels over MU. He’s averaging 8.9 points per game and has looked very good for the surprise team in the Southeastern Conference. We’ll see what he does against MU this weekend. He’s the one you point to and say he’s done more production wise, than what the Tigers currently have.

This position is tough because it needs addressing going forward, and while Tray Jackson will help with that, there’s no player to point to as the best alternative option.