Welcome everyone to The Verdict, Preseason Edition. In this series we’re going to be looking at a host of topics in the lead up to the much anticipated 26-27 Tigers Basketball season. Instead of going through the nitty-gritty of every single player as I’ve done in past Player Previews, I’m taking a bit of a step back and looking at some larger scale topics for Mizzou’s team. In this installment we’re going to be looking at Mizzou’s backcourt situation. We’re assuming every fifth-year senior is eligible for the purpose of simplicity, unless we know for certain otherwise. In this final installment I’ll try my hand at projecting the 2026-2027 season.
Golf checks in as a close second to college hoops in my hobby power rankings. I didn’t grow up around the game. I fell in love with it later in life. There’s something about the quiet solitude of a round where precision and concentration determine outcomes. I am not great by any means. Solid would be an apt description. Getting to that point was less of a physical transformation and more mental. Play the smart shot. Avoid the big score. Bogies are fine. Pars are wins. You get the idea. Needless to say, I spend a great deal of time during the basketball offseason outside with the clubs and my thoughts. Plotting and conspiring to get that handicap down.
About three weeks ago I was invited to play in golf tournament here in St. Louis. The forecast was dire for that afternoon. Rain was forecasted for every hour with a minimum chance of precipitation landing at 80% in each segment. I thought, what the hell, let’s give it a shot. It was a steady rain for two holes. From the third hole forward, the spigot was turned off, and we had sunshine more often than we didn’t. This is not an unusual experience for diehard golfers. When it comes to having a weekend ruined by rain, we’re well aware of the fallibility of forecasts.
Golf anecdotes aside, I feel like this conversation is apropos to our final piece of the Verdict Preview. We’re projecting things. Much like the weather, stuff changes fast. Much like the game of golf, outcomes are subject to the whims of human performance. The weather will change. Humans are not robots. Projections in a perfect environment are difficult and this is anything but. I could drop predictions based on vibes and public perception and probably not be far off. That’s not what this is. This is sterile vetting of numbers.
In a typical year we at least know the identity of who we’re supposed to be projecting. The SEC has 16 teams. Each team has approximately 15 players. We can feel reasonably confident in the 240 players we’re attempting to analyze. The order? Well, that’s where you make your money. This year we haven’t even afforded the opportunity to know who can take the court!
Unless you’ve been in a coma the last six months you surely know that the basketball roster situations are a mess. Fifth-year players have been filing lawsuits left and right to attain eligibility. International players have been testing the lengths to which the NCAA will go to prevent them from suiting up. LSU’s new head coach – the same as the old head coach – has been doing both. He had four players listed on the roster in September for crying out loud! How can we project this with confidence?
We put our work in and try our best. Below I’ll break the projections into three segments and discuss each independently. Know that a lot of data analysis and elbow grease went into these but also recognize that these could only be described as educated guesses. If the National Weather Service can’t forecast what it’s like outside two hours from now, how can I know what’s going to happen in March!
Mizzou’s Rotation
Much like the NCAA at-large, Mizzou’s 2026-2027 Hoops Roster has caveats. Both Mark Mitchell and C.J. Gunn are tentatively eligible. They will remain so until a court says they aren’t. That throws one wrench into the machine. Additionally, of the 13 players we have projected below to see minutes, 10 did not appear in a game for Mizzou last season. Just three holdovers – Trent Pierce, Mark Mitchell and Trent Burns – return. “Trent” translates to loyalty in Missouri’s dialect!
In a typical season I’m fairly confident we have the overall structure buttoned up. Sure, an injury may crop up, or a surprise player may emerge. A guy may slide up a spot, and a corresponding player slides down. This year? We’re trying our best and I’m not confident at all. I’ll add a couple notes on guys that may be…notable…in this chart.
- Mark Mitchell | Mitchell has led the team in percentage of minutes played and possessions used in two consecutive seasons. His eligibility case, while very straightforward compared to others’ involved in lawsuits, does give me pause. While I do believe this is Jason Crowe’s team, Mitchell has been the security blanket of this program for too long not to be heavily involved, once again. How he gets there may be different.
- CJ Gunn | Admittedly, this is where I had Gunn slotted when word dropped of his enrollment at Mizzou. After seeing his performance at Mizzou’s Pro Day, I’m highly questioning his position here assuming he were eligible. I did not move him for two reasons: 1. I’m not to be a prisoner of a single practice; 2. I’m less confident in his legal case than Mitchell. While he’s breezed through his eligibility case so far in Boone County, that professional contract and participation has me waiting for the other shoe to drop. A pause in the proceedings this week only heightens my concern.
- Aaron Rowe, Kennard Davis & Cord Stansberry | Along with CJ Gunn, one of these guys will almost certainly have to be higher. Consider this the backup allotment of point guards on the roster. I have them slotted this low because I simply do not know who will take the reigns and run with it. Each are a bit different in their games, and all will play. Who will step up determines the guy who shoots up the pecking order.
- Players 12-16 | While most are interested in the guys who are actually playing big minutes – as you should be – my sicko self is fixated on this group. There are some talented dudes here. The hazard of getting 16 guys who can play High Major Division I basketball is that about 25% of them aren’t going to see the court each time out. I would not be surprised to see one of these players step up. They all offer you something. Aidan Chronister appears to be the most poised to break into a higher group based on limited results in exhibition contests. Remember though, to move one guy up, one guy must move down. There’s only 200 minutes available per game!
SEC Team Projections
I’ve beaten the “how can we even do this,” horse to an absolutely heinous death at this point. We’ll do our best working with and around the SIXTEEN players who I do not know will be eligible across the league as of today.
For our first time readers, PAR is shorthand for Points Above Replacement. What is that, you may ask? Our good friend Evan Miya came up with something called the Bayesian Performance Rating, or “BPR.” That’s what he uses to rate individual players and teams as well. I endorse this statistic as it measures both offensive and defensive value in production terms, not just capabilities. My one hang-up with the metric for use in projections is that its rate based. Think of batting average in baseball as an example. Who is more valuable to a team’s outcomes: A .300 batting average hitter with 600 plate appearances or a .300 hitter with 200 appearances? Naturally, you should say the former. How much of that value is actually being captured? BPR is the batting average. PAR is the attempt to appropriately weight it for value actually realized on the court.
Below is my best effort at projecting the 2026-2027 SEC conference. Following the chart is an explanation of the various categories. I include this because methodology is important to disclose. If you do not care, I fully understand. For those of you in that camp, the yellow column contains the actual rankings and how the list is sorted.
- Salary – These are roster cost estimations from the piece done last week by Matt Norlander at CBS Sports. I trust his reporting. I do not necessarily trust the information that he was told.
- Return Prod –Matt Harris tabulated returning projection across all 16 teams in the league in a host of different categories. This is the average of those categories in one simple number.
- Roster Value – This is one of my two calculation methods for PAR. This method takes every player’s PAR score from a year ago and adjusts it based on historical data of similar players and how those players PAR scores changed. Once tabulated, I simply add all those figures up and arrive at Roster Value. This is both useful and not. It’s useful because it gives a total scope of how much potential production value is on the roster. It’s not useful in the sense that not all of that value can be realized. Remember, there’s only 200 minutes to be played and PAR is a counting stat – you much actually play to get there.
- Realized Roster –This is the second method. Here I lean on three different BPR projections: 1. Evan Miya’s current projections; 2. Evan Miya’s projections this summer (they differ, drastically); and 3. My BPR projections based on historical data. I combine these three for one solid number. Then, Sam Snelling and I painstakingly project the minutes played of every SEC player. We then weight that BPR figure against those minutes projections. This is a better method, in theory. The problem, of course, is that you have to be right in both calculations. There are always surprises.
- Weight Average –This is a weighted combination of the two methods. After years of evidence and analysis, realized roster projections have a slightly higher correlation with actual outcomes than roster value projections. However, the latter still has a strong correlation. As such, these two methods are weighted in accordance of that performance.
- Range High & Range Low –These are simply the weighted average +/- 5%. What would happen if Mizzou was 5% higher than projected and everyone else was 5% lower? That’s the reasonable best case “range high.” The converse applies for the “range low.”
- Note –Despite court orders to the contrary, I’m assuming RJ Luis (LSU) will be ineligible. The SEC has already won round one with the Bayou Bengals in pressuring the school to not roster former professionals in football. Should there be a round two, I’m expecting the same. The SEC is not the NCAA when it comes to enforcing their rules. Will Wade appears to have gotten the message when he said he would not roster Luis.
Unsurprisingly, Florida is the runaway leader. The Gators return the vast majority of their production from a year ago which saw them earn a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They replaced a quality departing guard with another in Denzel Aberdeen. Likewise, Texas being the clear-cut runner-up is no surprise either. This may well be Sean Miller’s best team since his time at Arizona. Granted, those Arizona teams could never solve the Bo Ryan riddle in March.
The third slot is where it gets fun. Oklahoma?!?! Let me tell you, I was as surprised as you are. I think Porter Moser’s a good coach and they have some intriguing talent. But third?!?! Listen, do I actually think they’re going to finish this high? Probably not. But this is my model and I must defend it. No team has done more to build their roster through fifth-year players than the Sooners. B.J. Edwards, Duke Brennan and now a return of Tae Davis is a trio that would start for a lot of SEC schools. And Moser added those guys since football season started. If they’re all eligible and the Sooners’ surprise, never forget where you heard it first.
Teams falling between fourth and tenth in the rankings are a pick ‘em contest. You could order them in any manner and I couldn’t strongly disagree with you. This is where the SEC shows it’s depth. Mizzou sits towards the front of that group. They could easily top it. They could easily bring up the rear. This has all the trappings of a team going from the 5-seed in the SEC Tournament to the 10-seed based on final game results. That’s not a new phenomenon! This is where my inclusion of the ranges are important. One injury, one guy breaking out – or falling apart – could move a team drastically within this group.
Ole Miss, Georgia, Texas A&M and Auburn are all quality teams. I suspect the majority of them will be invited to March Madness. I do believe they’re a step below as a group. But not a big step.
Overall, I see this as the second-best SEC group since Mizzou entered the league. It will not eclipse the historic 2024-2025 season. I do believe it will best all the other league-wide performances. Especially if everyone seeking eligibility plays.
As one not to let contingencies slip through the cracks, what if everyone who is eligible under a court order is not allowed to play when SEC games roll around? Well, I’ve got that covered too.
For the Sooners to surprise, they REALLY need those fifth-year guys eligible, huh?
SEC Player Projections
If you’re a real sicko, you’ll enjoy this last bit. As I mentioned before, there are approximately 240 players set to participate in some manner across 16 teams, 241 to be exact. What would a projections piece be without ranking every one of them? The same methodology applies here!