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WICHITA, Kan. — The past two Missouri men’s basketball seasons have started the same.

In comes the modern college sports roster mix: a few transfers, some freshmen, a handful of returners. The coaching staff turns to a sports psychologist to help them bond, get to know each other and find a way to come up with on-court chemistry during the one season that they, pragmatically, have together.

And they talk about going to the Final Four.

Mizzou coach Dennis Gates has not been shy about mentioning it, about encouraging his players to visualize that — a hardwood heaven in Phoenix last season or San Antonio this year.

“If you don’t shoot for that, you’re not training, you’re not practicing, you’re not preparing yourself for the opportunity that’s presented,” Gates said at the start of the 2023-24 season.

But MU missed that mark, of course, battling injuries and a capital-L Losing streak that took 20-plus games to wash out of the program’s immediate reputation. There were times Gates seemed frustrated with how 2023-24 went down. He’d bemoan the lack of foul calls that his players earned. After one loss, he said his team needed to be “participants in our own rescue.” After another, he dropped a letter-shaped bomb from the news conference podium to talk about how “(expletive) terrible” one foul-drawing effort had been.

Most of the time, though, the coach’s confident, composed, consistent demeanor stayed solid. Stoic, in pose and philosophy. At some point — or maybe it was there all along — Gates accepted and embraced an almost spiritual quest.

“I’m not excited about where our program is,” he said near the end of last season, “but I am excited to lead young men through adversity the way that I have been called to do so.”

He went to work.

And it worked.

In one of the best bounce-back seasons college basketball has ever seen, the Missouri Tigers, who were 0-19 against Southeastern Conference teams last season, won 20 regular-season games and are back in the NCAA Tournament. Mizzou is a No. 6 seed and tips off against No. 11 Drake at 6:35 p.m. Thursday in Wichita and on TruTV.

A lot has changed, but very little has too.

‘Prove we’re a good basketball team’

Start, as every season now does, in the transfer portal — before scissor even meets net in the Final Four.

Gates and his staff saw four needs to fill in the portal. They wanted a primary ball-handler, a combo guard with some scoring chops, a hybrid forward who could work at all three levels and a traditional center.

“Now, you never get every single piece that you want,” Gates said as the portal opened. “You never get that. But if we can get 85% of the stuff that I just explained to you, I really do think we’ll have a great team next year.”

Mizzou filled 100% of those spots, plus one.

Iowa point guard Tony Perkins has started 27 games and has a 2.6-to-1.5 assist-to-turnover ratio, which is what Gates likes to see out of his ball-handlers. Northern Kentucky transfer Marques Warrick, who transferred to MU as the NCAA’s active career scoring leader, became a microwavable bucket-getter off the bench. Jacob Crews, who transferred in from Tennessee-Martin, can ease the 3-point shooting burden of other wings. Duke transfer Mark Mitchell has become the offense’s focal point and leading scorer. South Carolina’s Josh Gray brought 7 feet of personality and post presence.

The Tigers also welcomed in a highly ranked class of five freshmen, some of whom have seen big minutes this season: Point guard T.O. Barrett and forward Marcus Allen earned the trust of their coaches quickly. They committed and signed before the losing streak took place, meaning they stepped into a program that was in a different place than they thought it would be.

Not that it fazed the freshman class, though.

“We all made a pact to not let that type of season go on again,” Allen said.

Perhaps the most impactful — or profound, certainly — group was the returners. After trying freshman seasons on and off the court, Anthony Robinson II and Trent Pierce stuck around to develop. They grew into regular starters as SEC play began.

Guard Tamar Bates, who finished 2023-24 a few percentage points short of basketball’s 50-40-90 gold standard of efficiency, is in position to shoot 50% from the field, 40% from 3 and 90% at the free-throw line this season. In a locker room of quiet, heads-down-and-work figures, Bates has been the voice behind the turnaround.

“I understand what’s necessary and what my teammates are looking at me for,” he said last week after snapping a late-season three-game losing streak at the SEC tournament.

And then there’s Caleb Grill. His search for a fresh start at Missouri sank about a third of the way through last season with a wrist injury that healed far slower than expected and hoped. Using a medical waiver to come back for his final season was a “no-doubter,” he said, because he knew a season like the current one was possible.

“I just want to prove we’re a good basketball team,” he said before the start of the season. “... I want to show people who we are because people have — I mean, we do too — a bad taste in our mouth after last season went.”

Grill has been the exemplar of how Gates’ coaching style worked this season. The head coach held his sharpshooter accountable at times — and at other moments just held him.

After Grill played poorly in the season opener at Memphis, Gates yanked Grill from the starting lineup.

“I benched him,” Gates said. “Accountability is growth, and he allowed me to hold him accountable.”

Then Grill popped off the bench to knock down eight 3s in a nonconference game against Eastern Washington, showing the kind of shooting potential he had. He left a November nonconference game against Lindenwood on a stretcher after a neck injury, then returned from that to become one of the best shooters in the country and win the SEC’s Sixth Man of the Year award.

When Grill checked out of the Tigers’ final home game of the season, he hugged Gates on the baseline.

They embraced longer than a shot clock could count.

Grill and Gates and Mizzou were what each other needed.

‘Thank them ... for believing’

As the current season trundled along, Gates turned down opportunities to compare it — contrast it, really — to the year before.

“This team will be their own story,” he said before the start of the campaign.

“I’ve not one time brought up last year to this team at all,” Gates said later. “I’ve learned, as a head coach, what I needed to learn. ... We didn’t put that stress on them. They wasn’t responsible (for last year).”

A gentle nonconference schedule looked like it might bite the Tigers in the tail when they trailed California by 16 points at halftime on Dec. 3, only for Robinson to pick-and-roll his way to 29 points and a win. Then, MU upset top-ranked Kansas, sending fans bounding onto the court.

A couple of months later, when Mizzou picked up its ninth SEC win of the season by beating then-No. 4 Alabama in a home track meet, Gates urged the fans to keep off the floor. The third top-five victory of the season showed Missouri could make that kind of win a little more routine.

The bliss of that night came with a curse. From there, the Tigers lost four of their last five games of the regular season — and even after a generally positive SEC tournament showing have lost five of their last seven.

“We had to learn some lessons,” assistant coach Kyle Smithpeters said at the tournament. “We are very talented. We are very good. But we’re not going to be able to walk out there and just go through the motions and get wins. People want to beat us.

“We’re not sneaking up on anybody. We finally, I think, came to that realization: that we’re going to have to go out there and do things the dirty way, the hard way again. ... You go back and look at Alabama: We scored 110 points and win a game in that type of fashion. It’s going to do something to your head. I think our guys, it just took them a little bit of time to come to the realization that, hey, we’re going to get back to the old-school stuff.”

Whether Missouri can get back to its old-school style or plain ol’ winning will determine what goes on the banner that will be hoisted into the Mizzou Arena rafters. Is this postseason about participating or making a run?

The Final Four is and has been Gates’ vision — a vision that might have seemed outlandish a year ago but looks a little more plausible from Wichita. That MU’s players and fans see it too was enough to bring the third-year coach to tears when he addressed his team in front of a crowd after the regular season finale.

“This doesn’t happen if players don’t believe in the vision of a head coach,” Gates said. “... But I specifically wanted to talk to our players and tell them how proud I am of them, and thank them and their families for believing.”