GD: Every kid is different. Cuonzo Martin’s first class was one of the highest rated in school history in part because there just happened to be a pair of five-star brothers who grew up in Columbia. Sometimes circumstances are in your favor.
But the thing is, Gates has already boosted the recruiting. His 2023 class included three four-star players, all of whom are in the top 125 in the country. That comes on the heels of a few years where Missouri was hardly competing with other Power Five schools on the recruiting trail. If you look at the kids Missouri is in on in 2024, they’re almost all top 100-150 types. He’s going to get some of them.
In other words, it’s a little early to be worried about his recruiting (I’m not saying you are, but there has been a bit of hand-wringing lately). He’s on a nice trajectory. But he’s also a bit of a victim of his own success. He overachieved in year one and Missouri fans got a really fun basketball season and now they want more. Before Gates, they were getting players other major programs didn’t want. Now they’re getting top 150 guys and everybody wants top 50 guys. When they get top 50 guys, everybody will want top 20 guys. It’s just kind of how it goes.
GD: Years ago, I used to write a weekly column. Then Joe Walljasper did it for us for a while. The truth is now, most things I write are the equivalent of a column. Everything has some opinion and/or analysis in it. There’s no longer a line between the reporter and the columnist. Everyone wears both hats. My opinion pieces just happen mostly to fall in the Ten Thoughts that I post every Monday morning or on the message board. I write a column off almost every game I cover. The offseason’s a tough time to do a column. There’s just nothing that really sparks strong feelings. And, at least for me, it’s really tough to write a column when I don’t have strong feelings about something. I can’t fake it. I’m not going to take a position I don’t really believe just to write a column. I can’t really think of anything going on in Mizzou sports write now that I have a strong enough opinion about to write a column at this time of year. But I do quite a bit of opining on here; it just may not be under a specific title every week.
