Christian Guess commits to Mizzou Basketball (UPDATED)

Last summer we were all sitting around twiddling our thumbs when an Illinois-Chicago transfer named K.J. Santos committed to playing Junior College pledged his commitment to the University of Missouri catching everyone off guard.

Nobody could tell for sure if Torrence Watson and Missouri were going to be a fit until he committed. Jeremiah Tilmon made no announcement, he just signed a grant of aid with Missouri and Javon Pickett just quietly ended up committing as well. Now we have a wing from Shaker Heights, Ohio named Christian Guess who wasn’t on anyone’s radar but is now a Missouri Tiger and will be on campus Monday.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We’ll try to track down more information on Guess and his abilities here in the next few days. He clearly is taking the scholarship officially vacated with the Cullen VanLeer announcement earlier this week and provides some much needed depth on the perimeter. In the meantime here’s a video of him:

My initial take is it’s obvious he plays with fire and zeal. Looks like he prefers to attack north-south and has a decent release on his jumper. A little like Pinson in that he needs to spend some time in the weight room, but with the right program he could be a nice piece. Clearly that’s an early and not fully informed take, but it’s what we got considering he committed an hour ago.

Welcome Christian! M-I-Z!

UPDATE: Missouri officially announced the addition of Guess on Saturday morning.

From the release, via MUTigers.com:

Guess chose Mizzou after drawing interest from West Virginia and DePaul, among others. The standout guard is a proven scorer, averaging 26.2 points per game during his senior campaign at Shaker Heights.

Guess poured in a school-record 57 points in an early-season matchup with Mentor despite checking out for the game’s final 3:56.

”We’re very excited to have Christian join our Mizzou Basketball family,” Martin said. “He has tremendous athletic ability and a scorer’s mentality. Christian’s competitive drive and desire to get better will fit right in with our program. We’re looking forward to getting him to Mizzou.”

Guess finished his senior campaign with 496 total points and 21 double-figure scoring games, notching 20 or more points 14 times and 30 or more on four occasions. He led Shaker Heights to its first District Championship since 2015 before falling in the Regional Semifinals despite scoring 30 points.