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Jan 10, 2026; Oxford, Mississippi, USA; Missouri Tigers guard Trent Pierce (11) shoots for three as Mississippi Rebels forward Corey Chest (1) defends during the first half at The Sandy and John Black Pavilion at Ole Miss. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images | Petre Thomas-Imagn Images
Once Kennard Davis Jr. committed to Missouri, it brought the Tigers to an interchange in their roster building.
While MU projected the BYU transfer as a bigger-bodied ball handler, the program was still light on proven creators — even if coach Dennis Gates taps into Jason Crowe Jr.’s latent passing potential. Had the staff been inclined, it could have pursued lingering on-ball portal options like Weber State’s Tijan Saine Jr. or Delaware’s Christian Bliss.
Instead, they took the other off-ramp: bolstering shooting. Last season’s slippage in offensive consistency mirrored a dip in MU’s ability to drill catch-and-shoot jumpers. Simultaneously, the Tigers became more reliant on pull-up attempts, whose value sagged by nearly 18.8%. Opting for another ball handler, however, would have left MU reliant on coaxing better returns from players already on the roster.
By mid-May, it was clear which route the Tigers had chosen.
On paper, South Dakota’s Jordan Crawford and Western Carolina’s Cord Stansberry are combo guards comfortable with the ball. In Columbia, they project as deeper rotation reserves whose skill sets reveal they are better shooters than drivers. Those additions, coupled with the retention of Trent Pierce, offer insight into how Gates and his staff tackled the shooting shortage.
Put simply, they’re relying on the aggregate. Whether it pans out will dictate whether Crowe, Davis, and redshirt freshman Aaron Rowe have operating room in pick-and-rolls, and if a slasher like Jamier Jones has open gaps to assault on straight-line drives.
To understand how this might play out, it’s helpful to think of shooting like a funnel.
At the top, we can isolate attempts by shot quality using Synergy’s SSQ tracking, focusing on 3-pointers that grade out as medium quality, ranking between the 20th and 80th percentiles. Next, we isolate typical half-court triples against a set defense.
A caveat before diving in: four players constitute a small sample, so these findings are better understood as a compass than a conclusion. After tallying them up for Davis, Pierce, Crawford, and Stansberry, we can categorize shots by play type to calculate their value (PPS) and the quartet’s collective shooting clip.
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Unsurprisingly, spot-ups dominate, comprising more than 64% of attempts. More importantly, the quartet shot 37.5% on these looks — several percentage points above the Division-I median. It is also easy to spot how 3-pointers fired off screens or handoffs create some drag (23 of 97 3FGA) and offset the efficiency bumps from pull-up triples out of ball screens.
From there, hand-charting lets us analyze the exact source of those spot-up attempts. A stationary attempt results from ball reversals, extra passes or kickouts from spot-up drives. The other categories reflect direct passes, such as a handler spraying the ball out of a pick-and-roll.
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Merging the top two rows, which account for the bulk of attempts, yields a 38.1% clip from long range. Even with some high-major regression for Crawford and Stansberry, this cushion ensures MU should, at worst, remain around the Division-I baseline.
Lastly, watching more than 350 of these jumpers on film outlines the scheme that generated them. The results are bland, but that is good news. Spreading the floor in a five-out alignment and running pick-and-rolls is standard, off-the-rack offense, making it easy to project how these transfers will translate.
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What is also fascinating is the struggle this group had on jumpers after an offensive rebound — colloquially known as dagger-3s. Conventional wisdom holds that these attempts, coming against a scrambling defense, are highly valuable. Gates’ roster also boasts the kind of length, athleticism and physicality to potentially manhandle opponents and generate those second possessions. Should that come to pass, the returns can’t be so meager.
A collective approach to shooting demands that MU’s staff assess which jumpers are most beneficial and cull those with poor returns. For this cohort, the strength is shooting off the catch and mixing in pull-up triples from secondary ball screens. At the same time, it is worth scrapping sets that ask them to shoot off movement.
To see how Gates might execute this collective tailoring, we have to look closely at the individual pathologies of the shooting corps — starting with MU’s most intriguing jumbo creator.
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Kennard Davis Jr.
Spending a season at BYU taught the St. Louis native an important lesson about role and fit.
The Vashon product’s stock rose when he shifted into a creative capacity for Southern Illinois, but the presence of Rob Wright III and A.J. Dybantsa in Provo limited those on-ball opportunities. Moving off the ball did not guarantee touches, either, with Richie Saunders ahead of him. Consequently, Davis’ usage shrank to 14.3% — barely clearing role-player status.
That should change in Columbia, where MU is buying into the conceit that Davis is a jumbo creator. Yet Davis will still share reps with Jason Crowe Jr. and Aaron Rowe Jr. That means stretches where Davis must flex off the ball and act as a competent spacer, supplying those young ball handlers with room to operate.
Skepticism about Davis as a spacer is easy if you look at his raw metrics. He shot just a 32.6% clip on medium-quality 3-point attempts last season, per Synergy. That feeling, however, ebbs when sorting his shots by play type. Davis sank 35.5% of 3-pointers as a spot-up option for the Cougars, a mark that’s a couple of percentage points north of the Division-I median.
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On stationary attempts, he was steady (14 of 38) but experienced a drag on triples resulting directly from ball screens (11 of 36) last season. At that volume, a couple of extra makes are enough to swing the pendulum on his percentage.
Davis’ layover in Provo exposed him to conditions likely to recur this winter. BYU ran a fast-paced, pro-style scheme that spread the floor and let playmakers cook. Expect Gates to take a similar tack with Crowe in the fold.
In practice, BYU used a basic five-out template. Slotting into his role meant Davis spent his time filling behind drives, occupying the corner for kickouts, and waiting on the wing for reversals. Some of his jumpers required modest relocation, but not enough to throw off his mechanics, yielding an 8-of-13 mark on medium-quality triples from that setup.
Conversely, his 1-for-8 mark on passes directly out of ball screens was befuddling. Six of those eight attempts were unguarded because his defender rotated to thwart a drive, yet Davis missed all but one.
Oddly, those struggles were limited to five-out alignments. When the Cougars ran high pick-and-rolls from flat looks or bluff action, Davis strafed opponents, hitting 5 of 11 triples when defenders loaded up help in the paint. Confidence in Davis ultimately hinges on that small-sample variance. Had two more of those ball-screen kickouts gone down, the narrative would have struck a more hopeful tone.
If spot-up consistency is a matter of sample size, refining his movement shooting is a project simplified by Missouri’s scheme. Sanding down jumpers off screens or handoffs shouldn’t be arduous, either. Gates’ squads historically ignore handoffs, ranking outside the top 290 nationally in three of his four seasons. Two years ago, MU leaned more on shots off screens, but that was an anomaly tailored for Caleb Grill.
More importantly, Missouri values Davis’ ability to shoot out of pick-and-rolls. Even on modest volume last season, he proved adept at punishing defenders who ducked under screens. That skill is the one the Tigers need to translate.
Assuming the staff calibrates his spot-up mix, Davis can help deter defenses from loading up on Crowe, assume some secondary playmaking duties, and bring physicality as a point-of-attack defender.
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Trent Pierce
Throughout nonconference play last season, one talking point was repeated ad nauseam: Just wait until Trent Pierce is healthy before judging the Tigers.
With Pierce sidelined, MU had only one proven shooter in Jacob Crews. Once healthy, Pierce was supposed to team with Crews to expand MU’s supply of jump shooting. Instead, the pairing left two players vying for the same touches. Steadily, Pierce cannibalized Crews’ allocation — and diminished the latter’s influence on the perimeter rotation.
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That shift made Pierce’s 15.2% usage rate deceiving. The junior averaged 3.9 medium-quality 3-point attempts per game, accounting for 61.1% of his half-court shots. When Pierce touched the ball, a jumper was leaving his hand.
Yet no clear schematic thread tied his stationary makes together; they came from a random potpourri of five-out ball screens, floppy action, and away screens.
Uniformity rested strictly in his misses. Pierce finished just 1-for-7 on dagger 3-pointers and 1-for-4 on stationary triples against zone defenses. These high-value looks netted him a dismal 0.545 points per possession. But again, we’re also confronted with a slim sample. Had just three more of those attempts dropped, Pierce would have eclipsed 40% on medium-quality looks.
Pierce found more rhythm on kickouts out of pick-and-rolls. Most came from the weak side against rotating defenses, where Pierce used subtle, off-ball drift behind stunting defenders to create clean passing angles.
That makes his movement shooting struggles head-scratching. Pierce was just 3-for-11 off screening action and 4-for-11 when factoring in handoffs, dragging his career movement shooting to 22.7% from deep.
Those misses spanned various designs: curling off pindowns, cutting vertically on zipper action, or emerging after exit screens. His misses reveal a slight upper-body lean at release, visible only in slow motion.
Still, perspective is needed. Pierce does not need to be a high-speed movement shooter. He is at his best as a classic spot-up threat with his feet set and shoulders squared.
What Missouri needs most, though, is consistency. During a late February stretch, Pierce averaged 11.5 points and shot 44.4% from deep. He then finished the year scoring 10 points or fewer in four of the final six games, shooting 12-for-34 beyond the arc. With more offensive help arriving, Pierce can focus on providing steady, baseline spacing.
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Jordan Crawford
Since Gates’ arrival in Columbia, he’s made a habit of taking in combo guards from low-major programs, carving out inefficient on-ball touches and turning them into useful shooters.
It happened with DeAndre Gholston, Marques Warrick, and Jayden Stone. Crawford is the natural heir apparent, though two factors separate him from his predecessors. Unlike his predecessors, he is not coming from a Horizon League program. Next, his usage rate was not inflated, even after injuries dented South Dakota’s depth.
While South Dakota’s system prioritized tempo and five-out sets, the redshirt junior rooted his role in covering catch-and-shoots. He knocked down 50% of 3-pointers stemming from a spot-up, including 9 of 14 on trips kicked off by a ball screen. Crawford remained active off the ball, interchanging with other guards, relocating, and lifting or drifting to make himself available.
Many of his makes came after the defense was put into rotation, exploiting gaps as a cutter or spot-up driver. The Coyotes were also well-drilled in making extra passes after a kickout, erasing closeouts.
Yet there’s a key distinction required when studying his shots resulting from passes out of ball-screens: Crawford was just 3 of 11 on tripes from five-out looks. That was offset by knocking down jumpers in early-clock situations — usually after a teammate received a drag screen — before a defense organized.
And how much stock should you put in one season? Crawford’s 40.3% mark on catch-and-shoots was a 10-percentage-point jump from his career benchmark. It’s reasonable to anticipate some regression as he transitions to the SEC.
However, Crawford showed steady improvement across his three seasons. Curbing his usage in a reserve role should help preserve some efficiency, and the Tigers’ coaching staff has a track record of modifying shooting portfolios to prevent efficiency drops.
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Crawford has also flashed some competence at punishing defenders who duck under ball screens by pulling up from behind the arc, including a 16-of-41 performance last season for the Coyotes. The action that produced those shots was a schematic hodgepodge. What unites them is the fact that they unfolded during secondary actions or late in possessions. They also demanded that Crawford use some craft with his handle to create space.
That’s a polite way of saying he’s a tough shotmaker — one that hit 10 of 21 three-balls from high pick-and-rolls last season.
Scouting Crawford is straightforward: once he uses a screen, he is hunting a pull-up. His 8.8% assist rate reinforces that he is a scorer, not an organizer. Having other options to act as primary creators allows Crawford to settle into a scoring-first mindset.
Nitpicking Crawford’s paucity of passing and defensive struggles is easy, but those concerns are minimized if he shares the floor with a lead guard and elite athletes. Any assessment means taking Crawford at face value — a potential source of quick scoring pop.
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Cord Stansberry
Say this much for the Western Carolina import: He looks the part of a trustworthy shooter.
The redshirt junior’s base is steady, and his motion is quick and compact, finishing with a high release point. The results, however, don’t always line up. Across three seasons, Stansberry, who started his career at Pepperdine, has sunk just 31.9% of his catch-and-shoot 3-pointers. More tellingly, his returns diminished as his volume increased, landing at 29.8% last season for the Catamounts.
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Those diminishing returns make Stansberry an ideal candidate for ruthless optimization.
While most of his 3-point attempts graded out as average quality, Stansberry made a respectable 18-for-47 stationary triples for Western Carolina—on par with his redshirt freshman season. The film reveals that his most consistent looks did not flow from a structured half-court offense. Instead, they were dagger 3-pointers against disorganized defenses.
During Southern Conference play, WCU’s slate also featured several foes that ranked among the top 100 nationally in zone defense usage. When Stansberry was not capitalizing on a broken floor, he was stationed in the corner waiting to punish opponents deploying a 2-3 or a trapping 1-3-1 setup.
By contrast, Stansberry mustered only six attempts in five-out sets, with all but one starting from an empty-side pick-and-roll. While he hit occasional shots out of point sets, horns sets and Spain pick-and-rolls, it amounted to just seven total possessions.
Whether Missouri can trust Stansberry off movement is another question. Though he shot 38.9% on movement looks as a redshirt sophomore, he is a career 9-for-40 on triples off screens. This is pressing because Western Carolina and MU call on similar tactics to shake him loose.
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Both programs run variations of motion strong, an action featuring a staggered screen for a shooter in the weak-side corner. WCU ran an empty-side pick-and-roll where a guard set a ghost screen, curled over an elbow screen, and cleared out, leaving Stansberry to sprint from the corner to the top of the key. That concept was just one of several that the Catamounts installed to create shots for Stansberry on the strong side of the floor.
MU ran this exact action last season to generate looks for Pierce and Crews. This shared schematic DNA makes it easy to project how Stansberry’s movement shooting translates to Columbia.
The Catamounts also used delay sets, exit screens, and vertical cuts over UCLA screens, but those failed to boost Stansberry’s returns. Stansberry is also a career 26.1% shooter on triples out of dribble handoffs, making that play type equally ripe for culling.
Stripping away movement triples is the easiest first step in reshaping his shot diet.
For Stansberry, culling those attempts immediately elevates his career catch-and-shoot mark to 34.6% — aligning him with the Division I median. From there, Gates can focus on the specific half-court actions that consistently yield clean stationary looks.
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Shooting to Fire Up the PNR Engine
Why go through all this rigamarole? Put simply, to create operating room.
Spacing is not an abstract concept; it can be quantified. Using data from the past four seasons, we can examine how 3-point shooting predicts pick-and-roll efficiency at the high-major level. Two variables emerge: overall shooting performance and 3-point volume. Volume is particularly telling.
Using half-court, medium-quality 3-point attempts to calculate percentage and volume, we can strip out 3-point percentage to clean up the model. Think of 3-point volume as capturing intent. A team that bombs away from deep stresses an opposing defense sideways. And a team that isn’t hyper-selective with its attempts poses a constant threat, leaving off-ball defenders weighing the risk of rotating into a gap to help.
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The chart above plots that relationship across 318 team-seasons, with MU’s seasons under Gates highlighted. Last season’s performance sits well below the 2024-25 campaign, a spatial reminder of what happens when a shot profile tilts toward pull-ups and catch-and-shoot efficiency drops. This erosion does more than hurt shooting percentages. It also chokes a team’s pick-and-roll engine.
We can also use the collective efficiency of Davis, Pierce, Crawford, and Stansberry as a very loose proxy for overall team performance and plug it into the model. Once plotted, we can see that one of its closest neighbors is the performance MU mustered during Gates’ debut season.
That roster — and the tactics used — are a stark contrast to what the program will roll out this winter.
Inheriting Kobe Brown was an obvious boon, but the bulk of Gates’ first rotation was comprised of up-transfers, a couple of JUCO imports and high-major role players. Nick Honor and Sean East II shared joint custody of the lead guard spot. Yet the job mostly entailed triggering triangle-based sets that unfolded at warp speed. When MU tapped into five-out or pistol sets, it was a change of pace or a counter to longer and more athletic defenses disrupting staple actions like split cuts.
Yet that iteration of MU performed well enough on catch-and-shoot jumpers (1.090 PPS) to suggest its average pick-and-roll performance, which includes passes, was a reflection of its ball handlers. That season, Honor and East graded out as below-average PNR scorers, per Synergy. Meanwhile, Isiaih Mosley’s scattershot availability robbed MU of an elite shot creator to bail it out when a possession stalled.
The upcoming season, however, showcases a roster with arguably the most raw talent of Gates’ time on the job. Scouts deemed Crowe the best pure scorer in his class, while Davis showed promise as a jumbo creator in Carbondale. And before a senior slump ($), Rowe was considered one of the top lead guards in the 2025 cycle. In other words, the Tigers’ fleet of ball-handlers should have more juice than three years ago.
We also know that their performance relies on symbiotic relationships. One step is diligent player development to help high-end talents like Bryson Tiller improve their performance as rollers. The other is what we’ve seen here: refined tinkering of shooting portfolios. Pulling them off is how you carve out more elbow room for Crowe to torture defenses — and reverse the drift that took place last season.
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