An assistant coach passed him the ball. He shot it and knocked down his sixth straight three-pointer from the top of the key.
Then he moved to the far corner and knocked down three of his next four, moved to the post and hit a few, then was nearly perfect from the free throw line.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Freshman guard Montaque Gill-Caesar knows that he [will be a focal point](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/10/21/age-not-stopping-gill-caesar/) of the Missouri offense this season, and he knows that means expanding his game.
“Posting up, the free throw line, shooting outside; anywhere I can get my points,” Gill-Caesar said.
While the team has said early on that it will be trying to [get the ball inside](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/11/5/mizzou-relying-rosburg-post-early/) early this season, Missouri coach Kim Anderson has also stressed that he wants to give opposing teams different looks offensively and defensively. Gill-Caesar, a top-50 recruit coming into the season, will be a big part of that.
“He’s a guy who can do a lot of things,” Anderson said. “He can shoot the ball pretty well, he can slash pretty well.”
Anderson has also told Gill-Caesar to be more aggressive, an opportunity that the young guard is embracing.
“All the coaches are telling me they want me to be a little more selfish on the offensive end and take the shots that are there for me,” Gill-Caesar said. “That’s what they wanted when they brought me here: to score the ball and make shots. Right now, around the (three-point arc) I’m getting a lot of open shots and I’m knocking them down.”
Freshmen don’t always come in and instantly become crucial parts of a team’s game plan, but the Tigers coaching staff said Gill-Caesar isn’t the average freshman.
“A lot of times freshmen are trying to fit in and exceed expectations, but with Teki he can do a little bit more,” said assistant coach Rob Fulford, who also coached Gill-Caesar in high school at Huntington Prep in West Virginia. “I think he needs to be a little more aggressive. When Coach (Anderson) is telling him to shoot more, that’s not a bad thing. So he needs to get that mindset.”
But while training Gill-Caesar’s mindset is part of the battle, Fulford said the bigger challenge is trying to figure out just how to harness his wide range of talents.
“He’s doing well,” Fulford said. “He’s a big, physical guard so we’re trying to use that and post (him) up. We can use him in a lot of different ways, but we need to utilize his strengths and post him up a little bit so he can dominate those smaller defenders.”
Gill-Caesar was just 1-of-5 from the field in Tigers’ exhibition against William Jewell College, and saw just 20 minutes of action due to early foul trouble. However, he turned things around in Saturday’s exhibition against University of Missouri-St. Louis, leading the team in scoring with 19 points. Gill-Caesar was 7-for-11 from the field and a perfect 4-of-4 from the free throw line.
The key to Gill-Caesar’s success, Anderson said, was exploiting the size differential between him and the smaller defender — something Mizzou will be looking to do often this year.
“We thought that we had a mismatch,” Anderson said. “We thought that whoever would be guarding him would be smaller. We said, ‘Hey, let’s get the ball to Teki inside some because he has an advantage.’”
While Gill-Caesar was just 1-for-4 from outside, he was 6-for-7 from inside, which is an area of his game he’s spent a significant portion of the preseason working on. The freshman guard said he has felt increasingly more confident as the preseason has progressed.
Mizzou’s regular season begins Friday against Missouri-Kansas City.