Cuonzo Martin’s busy offseason while retaking over as Missouri State’s head men’s basketball coach saw him add 14 new faces to the Bears’ roster with only two returning from the final team coached by Dana Ford.
Nine of his newcomers have college experience, whether from the Division I or junior college level, and he added a few young players to jumpstart a program that went 17-16 last year and still hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 1999.
A lot went into Martin’s roster building for the 2024-25 season while also considering challenges like Missouri State’s upcoming move to Conference USA in 2025-26, the ever-changing college athletics landscape and the transfer portal.
Martin already sees the “toughness” he tries to instill in his basketball teams. He noticed it when recruiting his roster and he’s seen it play out on the court during the early days of practice.
The coach said the Bears have all the parts needed to make a good team. He knows nothing will matter until they react once the ball is tossed into the air.
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“I like to think we have all the parts to be successful,” Martin said. “We’ve got size, we’ve got perimeter play and we’ve got guys that can make a shot with some physical play on the inside. It’s just a matter of putting them in a position where we can execute offensively, play with good spacing, score the ball and defend at the highest level possible. Today, to say I like what we have, I’d say ‘Yes, I do.'”
Six of Martin’s newcomers are 6-foot-6 or taller with two listed as guards. Some are considered high-ceiling prospects who didn’t see as much time at previous schools like Sam Murray II (Murray State). Others were productive at the juco ranks and carry a lot of potential like Jalen Hampton (South Plains) and Mozae Downing-Rivers (Barton). Some are looking for a step up in competition like Dez White (Austin Peay) and Vincent Brady II (IUPUI).
For the first time, Martin will have the opportunity to coach his son, Chase Martin, who transferred to Missouri State after four years at Purdue. He’s coming off a national runner-up finish with the Boilermakers, where his dad once played and was an assistant coach.
Chase Martin played in 27 games over four seasons and was a Big Ten All-Academic student-athlete three straight seasons before he earned his mechanical engineering degree. He attended Father Tolton when his dad coached at Mizzou.
Cuonzo Martin doesn’t know what to expect, but he’s not going to demand Chase call him “coach.”
“Dad” will work just fine.
“What I tell him is to ‘do it with joy.’ That’s it,” Cuonzo Martin said. “Let’s do it with joy because I’m better, two years later, I’m better with peace of mind. I’m better, I try to smile more and all that type of stuff. On the surface, we’ve got to laugh and joke all the time. I tell him to ‘do it with joy’ and then let the chips fall where they may.”
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On the court, Martin knows his son is going to communicate. He knows what it takes to win and what a championship-level culture entails. The work ethic won’t be questioned as he was raised doing two workouts a day.
“You gotta work hard and fight for everything,” Martin said.
What Martin didn’t do was go into recruiting the new roster looking for a certain number of veterans or a certain number of incoming freshmen. He already knew balance would be required and that’s how the roster shaped out.
There are three seniors, five juniors, four sophomores and four freshmen listed on the roster. He knew he needed experience at point guard some on the interior.
“They can control the game in some way,” Martin said. “If you got a big guy, you can pound the side to him and control the game and score the ball. The point guard can maneuver the game with experience. We felt like it’s that easy and we had to do this and I think we did.”
The next part was to find players who could make shots and be aggressive. Martin said, in the two years he spent away from coaching, he consulted with many different college programs, high school coaches, high school families, college families and NBA teams about the idea of having to find and recruit “winners.”
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Finding “winners” wasn’t as simple as finding recruits who have won a championship at different levels.
“You have to have the willingness to win,” Martin said. “You have to have a willingness and desire to be coached and grow. The biggest thing is, ‘Can you get a group of guys that are OK with playing with each other?’ Because the world we live in now is based on being an individual player. That’s more social media and has nothing to do with how you were raised. Everyone’s promoting their own platform, their own brand. So how do you get guys to understand that?
“In order for us to be successful, it’s ‘here’s what we have to do’ and then they have to be OK with it. It doesn’t mean if a guy is on the bench and doesn’t play, he shouldn’t be upset. He’s a competitor but it’s how you control your emotions. We’ve got to be emotionally intelligent in this situation. I’ve never been a coach that would play a guy because ‘I like him more than you.’ I always try to say ‘Whoever earns these minutes, you earned them. You’re going to be off here and there but, for the most part, you earned it, you get it.”
For Missouri State’s final season in the Missouri Valley Conference, Martin said he didn’t adjust the way he recruited because of the Bears’ upcoming move to a new league. That doesn’t mean there won’t be minor adjustments after this season.
The biggest of the adjustments, Martin said, will be where the coaching staff recruits. With multiple CUSA schools in Texas, for example, Martin foresees more time spent in the Lone Star State looking for recruits because of its bigger pool and MSU will begin to have brand recognition because of schools like UTEP and Sam Houston.
“You’re always going to try to get the best player you can get,” Martin said. “We’re going to try and recruit guys who might be high-major players, we’re going to fight to get him. You might lose on him, but it might take him two years to develop and we’ll get him better. It doesn’t really change.”
