He might be March Madness’ best shooter. His Mizzou teammates say he’s elite at this, too
By this point in the season, most everyone knows what Caleb Grill does best.
“Of course he can shoot the leather off the ball,” says Missouri teammate Jacob Crews.
“He can get going quick,” adds Drake men’s basketball coach Ben McCollum, tasked with engineering a game plan to quiet Missouri’s sharpshooting sixth man. “He’s obviously fantastic.”
Despite missing five games with a neck injury, and starting only a single contest this season, Grill has made more 3s than anyone on his team — by 25.
He’s shooting 40.5% from deep entering the NCAA Tournament, and his highlights include a barrage of 30- (and 40-) footers, contested looks and shots while on the move. One teammate called him “arguably, probably the best shooter in college basketball.”
His teammates benefit from it. His opponents fear it.
But there’s another part of his game that tells a bigger story.
“He’s had a lot of dunks this season,” Tigers junior Aidan Shaw said. “If you watch some film, you can see him — we call it lurking.”
That word brought a smile, then a laugh, out of the 6-3, 205-pound Grill.
Grill says it comes down to anticipation and film study. If you know what the opponent wants to do and put yourself in the right positions, they’ll give the ball away on occasion.
Easy as that, right?
Shaw, Crews and others painted a much more involved picture.
“He might be the best defender on this team,” Crews insisted. “I know we’ve got Ant (Robinson). But Caleb’s everywhere. He can guard any position. He knows every position. He knows every play. He knows where to put other guys while he’s in the middle of putting himself in position.”
Crews, in fact, said Grill has “a different aura about him when it comes to situations” and that he’s never had a teammate so adept at film study. Shaw, attempting to explain how Grill ranks second on Missouri (22-11) in steals, went back to Grill’s high school days in Wichita.
“So, he used to play football, and he used to play quarterback,” Shaw said. “So I would say that’s where he might get it from. But also having that kind of awareness where he’s seeing where people are passing the ball. He gets a lot of skip passes and intercepts them.”
Which leads to run-outs ... and dunks.
Funny enough, Grill has dunked 13 times this season (and missed twice), according to tracking data from Synergy. Josh Gray, a 7-footer who has played in 32 games for Missouri and started 16 at center, is 13-of-16 on dunks, including a Shaq-esque throwdown against Kentucky on senior day.
For a player who spends so much time camped behind the 3-point line, you might not expect Grill to score nearly a third of his 2-point baskets by dunking. Just like you might not expect Grill’s 45 steals, 1.6 per game, to rank second for the Tigers behind Robinson’s 64 (2 per contest).
“He studies this game. He loves this game. And it shows,” Crews said. “Nothing is too small or big for him. Every role is important. That means if he’s having to be in help defense or man-to-man defense or zone defense, he always knows what he’s doing.”
That will be on display in a perfect setting.
While Grill wasn’t sure — or didn’t want to divulge — the exact number of tickets he’d set aside for family and friends, he said he was grateful for everyone who would be able to see him play his first competitive game in Wichita since his high school days at Maize.
He was a four-sport athlete there.
Grill, who said in an interview with Mizzou Athletics he has lived in Mulvane, Maize, Garden Plain and Wichita, has kept a level head about returning home. Several teammates, including graduate guard Tony Perkins, described Grill as being “just his normal self.”
Part of that, Perkins added, is Grill’s excitement about returning to the NCAA Tournament in his sixth and final season of college. Particularly after missing most of last season — as Mizzou went 0-18 in SEC play — due to injury, then missing five more games this year with a scary neck injury that left him fearing his college career could be done.
“Honestly,” Grill said back in February, “sometimes I wish the games were longer.”
Grill has found joy the entire season in winning, helping the No. 6-seeded Tigers build an NCAA Tournament resume and taking teammates who have never been to the Big Dance to their first trip.
While he’ll almost certainly come off the bench — as you’d expect from the SEC’s sixth man of the year — no one is shortchanging the effect he’ll have on Thursday’s game (6:35 p.m. on truTV) against No. 11 seed Drake (30-3).
Whether it’s his “lurking,” dunking or, yes, logo 3-pointers at Intrust Bank Arena that get everyone going.
“You just try to limit it to one ...” McCollum said, “and maybe he misses it.”
This story was originally published March 19, 2025 at 5:03 PM.
