- Name: Toni Bryant
- Class: 2026
- Recruiter: Dennis Gates
- Composite Rating: 0.9945 (No. 15)
- HT/WT: 6-9/215
- Position: Hybrid
- Hometown: Zephyrhills, Fla.
- School: Zephyrhills Christian Academy
- Notable Suitors: N.C. State, Arizona, North Carolina, Kansas, Michigan, Florida State
What is Bryant’s Stock?
Starting last July, Bryant made a steady ascent up recruiting rankings but has settled around No. 15 in 247Sports’ composite index. To me, that’s a win. For starters, his availability was hit and miss this spring. Puma’s nascent shoe circuit reallystruggled with the act of uploading box scores, but the ones that are available only list Bryant as suiting up for eight games with Tre Mann Elite.
Spoiler: That’s not a large sample. But it was enough for Bryant to put together a handful of outings that did enough to dissuade scouts from dropping him.
However, Bryant’s also coming through in a cycle where, relatively speaking, there’s depth at his position. He’s currently the No. 5 hybrid in the 2026 class, and evaluators haven’t shied away from saying that he’s rawest five-star talent this year. It’s also vital to remember that those same evaluators have said the current crop of high-school prospects is probably the weakest group in at least three years.
Let’s tie these strands together: Bryant’s physical traits and raw tools moved him up the rankings in a class that’s considered weak overall, and his performance this spring wasn’t consistent enough to elbow past the likes of Caleb Gaskins, Miikka Muurinen, Cameron Williams or Christian Collins.
How well did Bryant play?
You can scrutinize Bryant’s stat line below, but I’m not sure how much weight they should have in our vetting process. Again, the sample size is small, and while Puma’s nascent circuit has a few top-tier prospects, its overall quality lags significantly behind Nike’s EYBL or Adidas’ 3SSB.
What those averages don’t encapsulate is the wide swings in performance. Sometimes, Bryant might score 20 points, followed by an outing where it was a struggle to reach six. Feast or famine is a cliché, but it’s also an appropriate frame for how Bryant performed.
Unfortunately, Puma’s box scores do not include minutes played, which prevents the calculation of helpful metrics like usage, rebound rates, or steal percentages. So, I’ve bypassed including rate-based stats.
Instead, I’ll rely on a couple of proxy data points. Bryant averaged 13.6 possessions per game and posted a 10.6 net rating. Using data from prior years, we can compare this performance to that of other hybrid forwards who were rated in the top 100 of the composite index for their recruiting class, as shown in the chart below.
Clearly, Bryant’s nowhere near the cutoff for elite performance. But in our sample of roughly 90 prospects, his average touches are right at the median, while his net rating is in the 36th percentile. In other words, he mustered a pedestrian spring and summer. Yet the location will make more sense once we unpack how Bryant goes about his business offensively.
What we can say with confidence is that Bryant has the tools to impact games dramatically, but that’s still mostly theoretical. He’s not at the point where he routinely powers his team’s attack.
How does Bryant operate offensively?
Few big men can move the way Bryant does. When moving in a straight line, he routinely beats guards in the first few steps of a sprint. He gains easy altitude jumping off one foot or two. And it’s modest to deem him a fluid mover in space.
Yet Bryant hasn’t consistently put those traits and tools to use in a half-court setting – or at least instances where he’s asked to do more than finish plays from point-blank range. For example, he only averaged 0.692 points per possession when posting up. And while Bryant showed a willingness to step out to the perimeter, he doesn’t pose a threat (0.417 PPP) in spot-up situations.
What Bryant can do is run the floor – hard. Beating defenders in transition creates his most efficient touches, which often end with lobbing the ball to him in the vicinity of the rim.
These preferences make any analysis quite dull.
Again, it requires no specialized knowledge to see Bryant’s glaring physical tools. He gets up to speed quickly, and he has the added benefit of being older – he turns 19 in November – than most of the guys trying to thwart him at the cup. Few players epitomize lob threats like Bryant.
He’s also comfortable sprinting the wing on secondary breaks and converting rim opportunities against a defense trying to scramble back.
And he’s also shown the occasional knack for leaking out when his defensive duties maroon him on the perimeter.
Like I said, there’s not much to parse schematically or skill-wise in Bryant’s transition touches. It does, however, make it easy to project an easy fit into MU’s preferred play style under Dennis Gates. Assuming the Tigers’ coterie of ball handlers remains stable, Bryant won’t want for service after he races up the floor.
Bryant showed glimpses of potential when keeping things simple against set defenses: diving to the rim, finding a void for a high-low feed in a zone, or slipping to the rim after screening on an inbound play. Still, a player with Bryant’s athleticism averaging 1.0 PPP at a cutter hints at a degree of inconsistency.
Fortunately, Bryant’s motor and activity on the offensive glass (2.1 per game) helpS him scrounge up a bucket or two each time out.
Now, it makes sense why Bryant’s productivity appears sporadic and his efficiency profile verges on average. Tre Mann Elite didn’t utilize him in any creative capacity. And Bryant’s skill isn’t quite polished enough to leverage situations where the ball finds him at spots on the floor where big men like him can get a toe hold.
Sure, there are brief flashes and glimpses of inside-out tools required to play the ‘boss’ role in Gates’ modernized version of the triangle offense. In the clips below, you’ll see instances where TME tries to funnel the ball through him at the elbows. There are instances where he connects actions off the bounce. He will roll or cut into post-ups.
However, Bryant is almost too eager to demonstrate skills that are works in progress. Yet that doesn’t result in rushed decisions. Instead, he will hold on to the ball for a beat or dribble longer than he should. That can make Bryant a ball stopper and squander the fleeting advantage he created.
Let’s see how that manifests on the block. Bryant preferred setting up on the right side of the lane, often making catches about one step away from the box. He’s at his best when he makes a move as soon as the ball reaches his hand, usually a spin toward the baseline when he can feel his defender a bit on the high side. Below, though, you’ll see Bryant is prone to taking his time.
At times, he’ll take one dribble too many, failing to displace his defender or set up a counter move. It’s also easy to see opposing bigs do all they can to sit on Bryant’s left shoulder, expecting that pivot or a hook shot. Almost all of Bryant’s punch plays unfold on an empty side, too, meaning he’s struggling without having to contend with a help defender.
When operating at the elbow, Bryant’s inclined to step out and face up his defender, resulting in a couple of common scenarios. One of them is squaring up to shoot. Mechanically, Bryant’s shot isn’t in dire need of an overhaul. What he desperately needs are quality reps. In other instances, Bryant assumes positions we expect from modern big men, such as holding a weak-side corner. He’s just not capable of cashing in threes from that spot.
Let me be very clear: None of these things are immediately disqualifying or elicits deep concern.
With the right developmental plan and patience, Bryant’s productivity could come to match what his tools suggest it should be. While that happens, there will be days when the Tigers’ transition attack comes to life and their offense creates enough finishing opportunities for Bryant to put up robust numbers. Conversely, there might be matchups where the pace drags and MU finds itself grinding out possessions in the half-court – circumstances that could dull Bryant’s impact.
It’s another reason why I’m keen on MU reeling in Tristan Reed.
Bryant would probably beat Reed in a battery of tests we’d see at a pro day, but Reed is also mobile enough to produce in transition and can punish defenses when ducking into the lane. And should Tigers succeed in refining Nicholas Randall and Trent Burns, there’s a sufficient buffer while Bryant begins to tap his immense potential.
What does Bryant offer on the defensive end?
The raw accounting tells us Bryant only amassed 43 possessions as a primary defender this spring – and it doesn’t take much viewing to crave more of them.
If you find all these tables and charts dry, just skip to the clips, press play, and marvel at how easily Bryant moves around the floor. When he struggles, it’s not for a lack of ability. It’s a lack of focus or application. Assuming he winds up in Columbia, Bryant is the kind of big man that Gates can easily plop into aggressive pick-and-roll coverages. He can play at the level, catch-hedge or outright switch against almost any ball-handler.
The catch? We didn’t get those glimpses very often this spring. Per play-type data, Bryant spent an overwhelming amount of time as a team defender tending to spot-ups.
I don’t spend much time fretting about Bryant ranking in the 30th percentile for guarding spot-ups. He only conceded a 30.4 percent clip on jumpers in those situations, and, as we’ll see on film, he’s reliable at rotating in the shell and using his ample wingspan to contest those attempts. Otherwise, Bryant’s performance grades out respectably.
When I watch big men closing down a shooter, I root for the mundane. Is he reacting on time? Is he controlled when covering space? Does he understand how to use his length to maintain a buffer? When you put eyes on Bryant, he’s rarely in situations where he winds up more than one pass away and scrambling to shrink the distance. And he’s not sailing by a shooter.
The intrigue, though, arises in situations where Bryant draws a switch and a dribbler resets to exploit him in isolation. His first slide is quick enough to take away and attack angle, and he possesses enough agility that it’s difficult for a dribbler to attack his top foot and open up a crease.
Additionally, his frame and core, which filled out more over the past year, allow him to absorb contact when an opposing big man faces up to attack from the mid-post or wing. Bryant takes the contact and – most of the time – maintains verticality to make a rim finish difficult.
For fun, here are three of the five snippets where Bryant’s mobility manifests itself in pick-and-roll situations.
The irksome aspect of Bryant’s profile shows up when he’s not quite locked in on the perimeter. Spot-up drivers had some success when Bryant’s defensive stance was a bit too upright, or he seemed a tad too reliant on a help defender doing clean-up work behind him. Stripping out those drives from Bryant’s profile boosts his defensive efficiency to 0.829 PPP – and right around the median for the PRO16.
All that cleanup work requires some patience, but it’s tolerable if MU’s front court includes Reed and Bryant, each of whom is comfortable anchoring as insurance around the restricted area. Those complementary assets would free Bryant up to wreck shop as a switchable four-man.
And if the Tigers’ wing rotation includes the likes of Annor Boateng and Aidan Chronister, another prime target in the 2026 cycle, there wouldn’t be a shortage of positional size. That’s vital when on-ball defenders include an average athlete like Jason Crowe Jr. or a lean-framed Aaron Rowe.
TL;DR Summary
Toni Bryant is an elite athlete with top-tier physical tools and defensive versatility, but his game remains unrefined. Limited appearances and inconsistent production raise questions about his short-term impact, especially in half-court offense. He excels in transition and fits Missouri’s up-tempo style under Dennis Gates, but will need time, development, and the right supporting cast to reach his full potential.