Missouri opens basketball season with new look

By MIKE DeARMOND
The Kansas City Star

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — As first days go, this one was different for the five freshmen in the Missouri basketball team’s seven-player rookie class.

Oh, they’ve all experienced that first day, from kiddie hoops to high school to AAU ball. But nothing like this first practice with college veterans and a vociferous coach like Mike Anderson, who was egged on by mentor and former Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson.

“In high school and AAU it was fun; it was something you did for fun,” said Laurence Bowers, a 6-foot-8 freshman forward from Memphis. “In college it becomes your job. This is what’s paying for your scholarship.

“From today, I can say this is my hardest practice I’ve ever been through.”

Teaching came first. Then all-out, up-and-down play with the newbies mixed in with the six veterans of last season’s 16-16 team.

No quarter given and you’d better not call a foul unless it draws blood, rookie.

“Coach would probably give it to you,” Bowers said, “but he’s going to get on you about calling it.”

Sure enough, Anderson only smiled and admitted: “We don’t call many fouls around here.”

The young ones learned that over the summer, when it was just the players in the practice gym. By now the new players are ready to hold their own, or at least not to complain while trying to.

Marcus Denmon, a former star guard at Hogan Prep Academy in Kansas City, took the court with a little swagger. He may be a freshman, but with Keon Lawrence having transferred to Seton Hall, Denmon figures a lot of the 29-plus minutes Lawrence played a year ago might as well fall his way.

“The first practice you want to come in and give it your all, show the coaches we’re here to turn the program around,” Denmon said.

The shots were falling for Denmon, just as in high school.

“I shot it well,” he said. “My first one went in. It was deep. It was on the left side, going that way (toward the west goal at Mizzou Arena).

“Right in front of our home crowd. It was a three, coming off a down screen.”

Of course, the home crowd was just imagined. The first few rows of the prime student seating section behind that west basket were retracted. Only a few assistants and members of the basketball staff stood there.

But freshmen Denmon, Bowers, Kim English, Miguel Paul and Steve Moore as well as first-year juniors Keith Ramsey and Zaire Taylor were indoctrinated into the program’s recent reality of small crowds as well.

After practice, each took turns introducing themselves to a camera for a commercial in which each said he was proud to be a Tiger and that “We need you at Mizzou Arena.”

“We want to get a lot of fans out, get our home base back,” Denmon said. “The fans, they want to see wins. That’s what I want to see, too.”

Every one of these new recruits came in with eyes wide open.

“Getting in the (NCAA) tournament is something that I expect every season,” Denmon said.

Anderson knows it won’t be that easy. As talented as the new players may be, they’ll still have to mesh with the likes of Leo Lyons and DeMarre Carroll, J.T. Tiller and Matt Lawrence and the rest. And the vets will have to fight for playing time, too.

“There are some minutes out there,” Anderson said. “As a player, that’s what you want, to have an opportunity to play.”

Missouri has gotten an early jump on the season because of a three-game exhibition tour of Canada. The team leaves Columbia on Friday bound for St. Catharines, Ontario, where at 4:30 p.m. Saturday they will play the Ontario All-Stars.

On Sunday, at St. Catharines, Brock University provides the opposition. On Monday at 9 a.m. the Tigers play the South Ontario All-Stars in Welland, Ontario.

“We’re looking at five or six more practices before we leave,” Anderson said, citing two-a-day drills both Tuesday and Wednesday.

“We’ll teach in the morning. Then we’ll get after it in the afternoon.”

Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com