Before this year, it had been nearly a decade since Missouri had reeled in a consensus 5-star prospect. Now, under coach Dennis Gates, the program has become a destination for blue-chippers, as it earned commitments from two 5-stars in the Class of 2026 over the summer: 6-foot-3 point guard Jason Crowe Jr. from Inglewood High School (Calif.) and 6-foot-9 forward Toni Bryant from Zephyrhills Christian Academy (Fla.). The Tigers also added 4-star Aidan Chronister, a 6-foot-7 wing from The New School (Ark.), in late September.
Crowe led the entire Nike EYBL circuit in scoring at 26.5 points per game, while Bryant averaged 13.3 points and 5.8 rebounds on the Puma Pro16 circuit. Both players are ranked in the top 25 nationally, per the 247Sports Composite. Missouri is the only school with multiple 5-star commits in the current recruiting cycle. Chronister, a consensus top-100 prospect, is considered one of the best shooters in the class. “The staff always made me a priority,” Chronister tells Hoops HQ. “They invested their time during a two-year relationship to be present and continued to show me the opportunity I’d have as a Tiger.”
Gates makes recruiting a top priority and believes in his principles. “I protect my program from inside out and outside in — I don’t just take any kid, nor any staff member,” he says. “I take guys who fit our culture and want to be here. The sum of that is more important than you convincing guys that this is the best place for them. We want guys and staff members who can call our place home and know that we have what it takes to compete at a high level.”
Missouri reaffirmed that it can compete at a high level last season, achieving one of the most remarkable turnarounds in college basketball history: After going 8-24 and winless in league play in 2023-24, the Tigers finished 22-12 and sixth in the SEC. The team climbed as high as No. 14 in the AP poll and earned a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
When Gates took over the program in 2022, it was coming off a disappointing nine-year stretch that included six losing seasons and multiple coaching changes. Since then, Missouri has reached the Big Dance twice in three years. That success has made a huge difference on the recruiting trail, as has Gates’ exacting approach to team-building.
Gates has established a strong culture during his brief time at the helm, one defined by the acronym “FLAT DUET,” which stands for friendship, love, accountability, trust, discipline, unselfishness, enthusiasm and toughness. “Those are the key ingredients and the baseline that I measure character on,” Gates says. “That has allowed me to be aligned with my players and staff. When you have that type of camaraderie within a program, that helps.”
To further assist with forming team chemistry — a growing challenge in the NIL era — Missouri works with renowned sports psychologist Dr. Joe Carr, who founded the NBA Rookie Orientation Program. Carr’s philosophy centers on another acronym: “RARE,” or relationships, accepting challenges, recovering from mistakes and executing coach directives. As both acronyms suggest, Gates is heavily invested in building close bonds with his players and recruits, ensuring his program supports their individual goals. “That’s important,” he says. “They trust me with their careers. Their support systems trust me with their careers. What does that look like forward facing? It’s important that we all collaborate on the goal and the path of that student athlete.”
Gates recruited both Chronister and Bryant longer than any other Division I coach. “Mizzou was consistent,” Chronister says. “They didn’t change their story. They were always the same. The staff spent the time to get to know me and my family, to understand what I was looking for in a program and to show how Mizzou was the right place (for me). Coach Gates has been great. He’s taken the time to be involved in my recruitment and has made an effort to be present that would seem uncommon for most head coaches.”
Missouri entered the race for Crowe late, with Kentucky seemingly in pole position. But the 5-star guard felt an immediate connection to Gates when the two spoke early in the summer.
“I feel like the first call I had with coach Gates was a different conversation than I had with any other college coach,” Crowe said upon announcing his commitment. “He wasn’t just talking to me trying to recruit me. He was actually there for me as a player and as a person as well.”
Gates’ impressive track record of signing and developing talent has also strengthened his pitch to recruits. Over an eight-year stint as an assistant coach at Florida State (2011-19), he was instrumental in assembling four straight top-15 recruiting classes, which produced five NBA Draft picks. In his first season at Missouri, he helped turn Kobe Brown into a unanimous First Team All-SEC honoree and a first-round pick. Overall, seven former Tigers have signed with NBA or NBA G League franchises since Gates’ arrival, including recent standouts Tamar Bates and Caleb Grill.
Bates spent his first two years at Indiana, where he averaged just 5.1 points and 1.4 rebounds, before transferring to Missouri in 2023 and blossoming into one of the top guards in the SEC. Grill was also in the program’s 2023 transfer class, coming over from Iowa State to little fanfare. He missed most of his first campaign in Columbia due to injury, then shined off the bench last season, winning SEC Sixth Man of the Year.
“Those things add up (when recruiting),” says Gates, “because they see the player development, they see the situation, they see the relationships that I build, they see the style of play from the offensive end to the defensive end, and they see our level of competition and the success that we’ve been able to endure.”
The commitments of Crowe, Bryant and Chronister have fans buzzing about the team’s potential in 2026-27, but as far as Gates is concerned, Missouri’s bright future starts now. With several key pieces returning, the Tigers are expected to be in the NCAA Tournament mix once again. Missouri is the only SEC school that retained three starters: 6-foot-8 junior forward Mark Mitchell, 6-foot-3 sophomore guard Anthony Robinson II and 6-foot-10 junior forward Trent Pierce.
Mitchell, who transferred from Duke in 2024 without even taking a visit, made the All-SEC Third Team; Robinson, No. 81 on Hoops HQ’s ranking of the Top 100 players for the 2025-26 season, was the only underclassmen to be named SEC All-Defense; and Pierce averaged 6.7 points and 3.2 rebounds in just 17.1 minutes.
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Gates envisions 6-foot-3 junior guard Sebastian Mack, the Tigers’ highest-rated transfer, breaking out similarly to Bates. Mack, a consensus top-60 recruit in 2023, played his first two seasons at UCLA, averaging 10.8 points on 40.4 percent shooting. Missouri also added size, athleticism and experience in the portal, including 6-foot-11 senior forward Jevon Porter (Loyola Marymount), the younger brother of former Tigers Michael Porter Jr. and Jontay Porter, and 7-foot senior center Shawn Philips Jr. (Arizona State).
Amid a loaded conference, the Tigers continue to fly under the radar. That won’t last much longer. After this summer, the bar for the program has been set higher than ever. Gates wouldn’t have it any other way.
“At the end of the day,” he says, “we have to make sure that our goals are always set to Final Fours and national championships.”
