Grin and Bury It

BY MARK GODICH, BJ ’79 PHOTOS BY ZACH BLAND

The grin. The effervescent grin. Does it ever disappear? Torrence Watson is beaming again on this spectacular fall morning, his boundless joy bouncing off the walls in the media room at Mizzou Arena, and when a visitor mentions he and his bride will be dining later on the patio at Flat Branch restaurant, the outgoing sophomore guard gives a nod of approval. This aside diverts the conversation to a discussion about favorite cuisines, and with that, Watson’s eyes light up and his grin grows wider. He is eager to share what he prepared for dinner the previous night: steak with green peppers and cheese, sprinkled with a little seasoning and wrapped in flour tortillas.

“I just look at the instructions and try to do it,” he says confidently. “I don’t think it’s that hard to cook when you follow the instructions. I was thinking about cooking some pasta tonight. I’ve got to learn how to make some wings, with some special sauce. I like sweet and spicy stuff.” Torrence Watson, master chef. But make no mistake. Watson is a basketball player first and foremost — and a masterly one at that. After committing to Ohio State (his brother, Terrence Jr., is a rabid Buckeyes fan whose passion for the scarlet and gray undoubtedly was an influence), Watson had a change of heart, arriving on campus in the summer of 2018 as arguably the most celebrated recruit of the Cuonzo Martin era not named Porter. He was a three-time all-state selection at Whitfield High in St. Louis, the Missouri Gatorade Player of the Year in 2018, a silky smooth shooter who as a senior averaged 31.2 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game. The list of star recruits who have fled the state is too long to revisit here, which made Martin’s signing of a marquee player from the city of St. Louis all the more significant.

Always one to embrace the spotlight — he was the narrator at a couple of high school plays and became the unofficial spokesman for his grassroots team, relishing the opportunity to appear in front of the media — Watson found the transition to college to be anything but seamless. As a freshman, he played in all 32 games, making four starts and averaging a respectable 22.8 minutes per game. Yet he experienced the typical freshman growing pains as he adjusted from being the scoring star in high school to a reserve whose playing time was largely dictated by his performance on — gulp! — defense.

“It was the speed of the game,” he says. “Not so much the up and down. The shot clock was new to me. Everybody is so much bigger, so much stronger, so much faster. You can tell the difference between a freshman and everybody else. For me, it was the defensive part, especially playing for Coach.”

He laughs. “Basically, you don’t play defense, you don’t play,” he adds. “It’s not too hard for that to click in your head.”

The bigger issue was that little was clicking in Watson’s game. The kid who on three occasions as a high school senior scored 50 or more points in a game didn’t tally the 50th point of his college career until his 11th game. His confidence level essentially mirrored the number on his jersey: 0. Rock bottom came during a Dec. 2 game against Central Florida. Watson played only two minutes in the overtime victory and didn’t even get up a shot. Especially close to his mother, Kim, he recalls one late-night post-game conversation as the two huddled inside Mizzou Arena. That effervescent grin? Watson had tears in his eyes.

“Coach was pushing me really hard about how good I could be and how much I could help the team,” he says. “But for me, I was like, I’m not scoring the ball. I’m not doing as well on defense. I’m not playing as much because I’m a freshman and I don’t know as much. “

What Watson didn’t understand, Martin says now, is the work required to be a great player at the highest level of college basketball. It’s not that Watson was lazy or even uncoachable. Quite the opposite. He simply hadn’t grasped the commitment necessary to be successful.

“I would talk to him during recruiting because he scored at such a high level,” Martin says. “I would say, ‘Be prepared to work hard.’ But it’s hard to understand what that means when you’re having a lot of perceived success. Not that he thought this would be a piece of cake. But wow, this is tough. Most freshmen come in not with a level of fear but heightened awareness.”

Heightened awareness can be a great motivator. Watson started grinding, spending more time in the gym working on his jumper and, of course, his defense. His minutes steadily increased, and then came the break, albeit unfortunate, that provided a real opportunity. Late in a Jan. 28, 2019, loss at Arkansas, sophomore guard Mark Smith severely sprained his left ankle. Smith would miss the next six games, and after returning for two games, he shut it down for the season. Martin’s backcourt rotation got one pivotal player shorter, and as a result, the leash on Watson got a little longer. Now he didn’t have to look over his shoulder when he took an ill-advised shot or made a mistake defensively, wondering who was at the scorer’s table waiting to replace him.

The confidence grew, and with it came the offensive production Missouri fans had come to expect. Over his last 14 games,

48 MIZZOUMAGAZINE Watson averaged 10.5 points per game, scoring in double figures on eight occasions. The light bulb, he says, went off during games at Florida and Mississippi State. It wasn’t that he scored a ton of points; rather, he was finally getting comfortable as a Division I basketball player. He returned home and scored a career-high 20 points in a win over South Carolina. Then came a telling game at Georgia. “That showed my confidence had improved,” he says. “If that had happened earlier in the season — I think I started the game 0 for 5 — I might have shut down. But we went into the locker room at halftime, and my teammates said: ‘You’re taking good shots. We know you’re going to make them in the second half.’ ” And then he did, converting five of six 3-point attempts after the break.

For a capper, in the SEC tournament against eventual Final Four participant Auburn, he put on a shooting display, making six of nine 3-pointers and scoring 20 points. Over his final seven games, he hit 24 treys. He set the single-season record for 3-pointers made by a Missouri freshman, with 53, eclipsing by seven the mark established by Kareem Rush in 1999–00. As for that longer leash, Watson’s final five games were his most in terms of time on the floor; he played no fewer than 31 minutes, logging 39 against Ole Miss.

He drew encouragement from his two roommates: Smith and point guard Dru Smith, a transfer from Evansville, Indiana, who had to sit out the season. The Smiths (no relation) were always in Watson’s ear, coaching him up and building his confidence.

“As soon as Mark got hurt, they said to me, ‘Coach is probably going to lean on you a little more,’ ” Watson recalls. “They would come into my room randomly and talk about my last practice or my last game. [Mark and Dru] tried to keep me up. If I had a bad game, if I had a bad practice, they were always there for me.”

If anyone could relate to struggles adjusting to the college game, it was Mark Smith. As a freshman at Illinois in 2017–18, the heralded recruit shot a ghastly 23.2 percent from 3-point range. His issues were compounded in that he didn’t believe there was anyone in Champaign he could turn to for advice or a word of encouragement. Smith was determined not to let Watson wander down the same path.

“I tried to help him any way I could because we knew he was going to be a big part of our team and help us win,” Smith says. “The things that got me through it were to work hard, listen and have a good attitude. It was easy to talk to Torrence. He’s always had a good attitude. He’s one of those guys who’s always happy.” Smith typically found an eager listener who even amid his struggles never lost that smile. But about the cooking … Told that Watson had been touting his culinary talents, Smith laughs. “No,” he says without hesitation. “Can’t cook!”

The roommates have changed this year, but the mission remains the same: Keep grinding. Watson is now bunking with fellow sophomores Javon Pickett, Xavier Pinson and Brooks Ford. “He’s always got a smile on his face,” Pickett says of Watson. “He’s going to come knock on your door and make sure you’re good — just the little things that make you feel like you’re special. He’s going to bring some energy to the house. He’s going to play some music and start dancing.”

A dancer too. But what has Pickett seen from his new roommate in the kitchen? “I’m not sure I’m going to trust

his food,” Pickett says.

Watson takes particular inspiration from Pickett, who to a man the Tigers call the hardest-working player in the program. Martin goes so far as to call Pickett and Mark Smith “the Clockwork Boys. It’s like clockwork that they’re in the gym every morning. They’re wired to do that.” In fact, as a sophomore, Smith almost doubled his shooting success from deep, shooting 45.2 percent.

As he pounds home the point about work ethic, Martin reflects on his playing days at Purdue. His roommate was Glenn Robinson, an All-American who went on to have a decorated NBA career. “He’d get out of bed and this is what it is,” Martin says. “But for most of us, we’ve got to work at it. If you want to be great, that’s what is required.”

How can Torrence Watson be great? The next step is to develop a more rounded game. For all of his scoring prowess, his shooting last season from outside the arc (an impressive 36.1 percent) was almost identical to that from inside it (a ho-hum 37.7 percent). Martin wants his 6-foot-5 sophomore to take advantage of his size, to become more of an inside threat, to be a better finisher around the rim. It’s not just about getting the shot; it’s also about taking the steps required to set it up.

“It’s not necessarily being a post-up player but just understanding how big and strong he is,” Martin says. “Continue to improve his ability off the dribble. Being efficient with the shot fake. Because he can shoot the ball, the shot fake is very important. That will dictate a lot of things with his game. Setting up his cuts. Half the battle is setting up the cuts to get open. That comes with time. Also learning how to use your shoulders and your hips. It’s his preparation before getting off the shot. He’s got the big part — the ability to make a shot. It’s the little stuff to get there.”

So Watson continues to hone his game. With a year under his belt, he has a much better grasp of the expectations and what it takes to be successful. He gets to the gym a little earlier, stays a little later. (He also experienced an off-court issue, drawing a one-week suspension from team activities after a DUI in September.) He can’t estimate how many shots he gets up in a day, but it’s considerably more than he did at the same time a year ago.

ShotTracker will tell you everything you need to know about that. The machine is all the rage in the analytics-driven world of college basketball, charting shots attempted — and made — for every player. Coaching staffs are constantly checking to see who’s putting in the work. Smith conservatively estimates he and Pickett take 1,000 shots a day.

“Javon is a great guy to live with,” says Watson, who goes so far as to call his classmate a role model. “I told him I’m going to beat him on ShotTracker.” He isn’t kidding. But he says it with a chuckle and, of course, that trademark grin. M About the author: Mark Godich, a 1979 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, is a senior editor at The Athletic and a former senior editor at Sports Illustrated.

If you believe the prognosticators, Missouri basketball is in for a long season. Many have slotted the Tigers for a finish near the bottom of the everchallenging SEC. Don’t believe everything you read. “I like our guys,” Coach Cuonzo Martin says. “I think we’ve got ball handlers, we’ve got shooters, we’ve got size. We’ve got all the things. Now it’s a matter of going through it.”

In fact, the Tigers have interchangeable parts, with a slew of backcourt depth and forwards who have the potential to play inside and out. As has become the trend in college basketball, Martin wants to spread the floor with shooters, so the 3-point shot figures to be an integral part of the offense. Everything will revolve around 6-foot-10 junior Jeremiah Tilmon.

“He’s strong, he’s athletic, he’s fast,” Martin says. “But Jeremiah has to understand that he’s a leader and is as good one-on-one as any big man in America. He needs to understand who he is.”

He also needs to stay on the floor. It’s no secret that foul trouble has been an issue in his first two years. Although his fouls per 40 minutes slightly improved over his freshman year, last season Tilmon’s 111 fouls were 38 more than any other Tiger. He fouled out of 10 games and finished with four fouls in eight others. The good news is that when he has been able to stay on the floor, he has been effective if not dominant. But he has averaged only 21.7 minutes in 64 games. Imagine the possibilities if Martin can get 30 minutes out of his talented big man.

For the better part of a year, Missouri fans have been awaiting the highly anticipated debut of Dru Smith. A transfer from Evansville in Indiana, with two years of eligibility remaining, the 6-foot-3 Smith is a do-it-all point guard.

“It’s not as if he’s going to be scoring 35 points a night,” Martin says. “He’s a selfless player. The bottom line is: What does it take to win games? So he’s going to get a big rebound or a big steal. He has a high IQ for the game. He can make shots, he can drive the ball, and he just does all of those things.” With the SEC grind and a tough nonconference slate away from Mizzou Arena, the schedule is plenty daunting. Nevertheless, Martin believes he has the pieces to contend for an NCAA Tournament bid.

“I like it when guys have a level of humility but are also hungry,” he says. Skeptics take note.