‘A whoa moment.’ This SEC school is making a big basketball recruiting push
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Missouri is one of the early leaders in the 2026 men’s basketball recruiting rankings.
- The Tigers have commitments from two five-star prospects in the 2026 class.
- Head coach Dennis Gates is still looking to make his first Sweet 16 at Missouri.
Plenty of dominoes are still left to fall with the 2026 men’s college basketball recruiting class.
Various factors — including the advent of revenue sharing in college athletics, the impact of the NCAA transfer portal on roster building and the overall decreasing reliance on freshman talent — have meant the 2026 recruiting group is taking its time when it comes to making college commitments.
As of Monday morning, only seven of the top 50 prospects in the 247Sports Composite rankings have verbally pledged to join a program.
But despite this small sample size, those checking in on the early recruiting results for the 2026 class might have done a double take when seeing which school leads the SEC rankings.
Missouri — yes, Missouri — is the top-ranked SEC program when it comes to recruiting the high school senior class. Currently, the Tigers (with two commitments) have the third-best 2026 class in the country.
A total of 25 prospects in the 2026 class have 5-star status, according to the 247Sports Composite. Only three of them have made their college commitment. And two of them will join head coach Dennis Gates and the Tigers next season.
In July, guard Jason Crowe Jr. — a former UK recruit — committed to the Tigers. That decision came at the end of a secretive recruiting process in which Crowe didn’t publicize his scholarship offers and didn’t take any official visits. Crowe’s first college visit actually came last weekend when he made a trip to Missouri for the first time.
Drew King, who covers Missouri basketball for PowerMizzou and 247Sports, told the Herald-Leader that Crowe’s commitment came largely thanks to Gates’ recruiting efforts.
“It was just a Dennis Gates thing where he was very involved in the recruitment, and Jason Crowe liked a lot of the things that he had to say. So to see that unfold … It was really a ‘whoa’ moment,” King said. “But it was also like, you knew that one of these dominoes was going to fall for Dennis Gates eventually. So it’s not surprising that Dennis Gates got a five-star. It was surprising that, that was the guy who came off the board first.”
Gates followed that massive recruiting win with another one last week when power forward Toni Bryant pledged to join Missouri.
The Tigers had last landed a five-star prospect in the 2017 recruiting cycle with small forward Michael Porter Jr., a hometown recruit who only played three games for the Tigers due to a back injury before departing as a first-round pick in the 2018 NBA draft.
Now, Mizzou is set to welcome two elite recruits in the same class next year in Crowe (the No. 9 national recruit) and Bryant (No. 21).
Dennis Gates has recruited at an elite level at Missouri
In recent times, Missouri shouldn’t be confused with an basketball juggernaut.
Mizzou’s last conference tournament title came in 2012 and the program’s last regular-season conference championship was more than three decades ago in 1994. Both of those came when Missouri was part of the Big 12 Conference, prior to its 2012 move to the SEC.
Since that SEC move, Missouri has gone a combined 84-148 (36.2%) in league games. The Tigers have finished with a losing conference record in seven of their 13 seasons in the league.
The Tigers have also had four coaches over the last 13 years, with Gates leading the program for the last three seasons after a successful spell at Cleveland State and stops as an assistant at Florida State and Nevada.
“Dennis Gates has always been a pretty good recruiter everywhere he’s been. He played a pretty pivotal role in building up Florida State while they were really good, helped them become an Elite Eight team while he was out there. I think that, that hasn’t changed at all,” King said. “He’s still very much involved on the recruiting front. He, himself, gets very involved in a lot of these guys’ recruitments.”
To King’s point, Gates has done some heavy recruiting lifting since he was named the Missouri head coach prior to the 2022-23 season.
During Missouri’s time in the SEC, and before Gates’ arrival in Columbia, the Tigers landed only nine high school recruits that were top-100 players in the 247Sports Composite rankings. In the last few years under Gates, Mizzou has gotten commitments from seven such players, including Crowe and Bryant in next year’s class.
“He’s cast a lot of lines and cast a wide net as a head coach,” King said of Gates’ recruiting approach. “And (he) has started to finally reel some of these guys in.”
King also stressed that Gates hasn’t been shy about recruiting in some deep waters. A local example of this is with Kentucky freshman guard Jasper Johnson, who was significantly recruited by the Tigers and took an official visit to Mizzou.
It’s worth noting that Gates has gotten off to a strong high school recruiting start at Missouri while weathering one of the worst college basketball seasons in recent memory. The 2023-24 Tigers lost all 19 games they played against SEC foes. The indignity of that season was softened by the fact Missouri brought in the fifth-best high school recruiting class in the nation in 2024, which helped the Tigers rebound last season to be a 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
“I think that the recruiting success, it cools off your seat a lot, right?” King said. “I don’t think anyone was seriously questioning whether or not Dennis Gates was going to be back after the 0-19 season, not just because he had a couple of key injuries that year, but also because he had a top-five recruiting class coming in.”
In addition to high school recruiting, Gates has also done a quality job of surveying the transfer portal for talent with the likes of Tamar Bates (Indiana), Caleb Grill (Iowa State), Nick Honor (Clemson) and Mark Mitchell (Duke) all proving to be effective additions in recent seasons.
Can Dennis Gates turn recruiting success into NCAA Tournament results?
It’s not quite the elephant in the room yet, but Missouri is starved for some March Madness success. The Tigers are 2-8 in their last 10 NCAA Tournament games and Mizzou hasn’t reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament since 2009.
Already in his short tenure at Mizzou, Gates has suffered a pair of deflating March Madness defeats. In Gates’ first season, Missouri lost to 15 seed Princeton in the second round. Last season, the Tigers were upset by 11 seed Drake in the opening round. Those discouraging postseason eliminations sandwiched Missouri’s winless SEC campaign.
“If we’re talking about just recruiting, everybody absolutely loves Dennis Gates and wants him to be here as long as he can be,” King, the Missouri basketball reporter, said. “It just depends on, can he turn some of these recruiting wins into wins on the court and more wins on the court? He’s done a fine job so far. I think that people are just expecting a little bit more considering the trajectory he’s got the program going in.”
That trajectory could also include more top recruits in the 2026 class. Missouri is a strong contender for a pair of four-star recruits, center Tristan Reed and small forward Aidan Chronister.
Landing even one of these prospects would further juice Missouri’s recruiting profile for next season, and continue to pad the Tigers’ lead atop the SEC recruiting leaderboard. Missouri is one of only three SEC schools (along with Alabama and Mississippi State) with multiple commitments from the high school senior class.
This story was originally published September 15, 2025 at 7:15 AM.
