Even with an array of new players, Missouri men’s basketball coach Frank Haith said the first practices of the new season are for competing.

They’re not for learning, meeting or greeting. That time has passed.

Thanks to an abnormal offseason that featured weekly summer practices and a team trip to Europe, Missouri’s task of meshing its two returning contributors with six transfers and two new coaches has been a little easier than expected.

Now, with the season just two weeks away, the process has shifted from initiating to game-planning.

“Oh, they’re different,” Haith said of the team’s current practices. “There’s a winner, there’s a loser. So there’s a competition. Losers run, winners go get water — not that losers don’t get water.”

A new NCAA rule allowed the Tigers to come together for weekly practices in the summer. That was when freshmen, transfers and two new assistants — Rick Carter from Western Michigan and former Virginia coach Dave Leitao — took to learning Haith’s system.

The practices set up the Tigers for a trip to Europe, where new players ran that system in five exhibition games.

“Just to get acclimated to the playbook, it helped a lot,” said senior guard Keion Bell, who sat out last season after transferring from Pepperdine. “This is my first year playing, but I already know the plays like the back of my hand just like I’ve been here for four years.”

The extra time also helped the Tigers bond, Bell said.

“This is one of the most close-knit groups that I’ve been a part of my whole life,” he said. “Any guy, one through 16, they can talk about the player next to them just as much as any of them.”

The Tigers will look to establish new roles for players who have both started and excelled for other teams. Bell scored more than 1,300 points in three seasons at Pepperdine. Redshirt junior Earnest Ross led Auburn in rebounds in 2010. Senior center Alex Oriakhi started the last three years at Connecticut, including during the team’s national championship run in 2010.

Missouri will also need to figure for the return of redshirt senior forward Laurence Bowers from an ACL tear. Bowers, who led the Tigers in rebounds and blocks in 2010, said the team’s challenge is splitting minutes among players who are used to being centers of attention.

“You think about it, every transfer on this team was the man on their teams,” Bowers said. “… We’re definitely going to have to sacrifice.”

Senior guard Michael Dixon knows about sacrifice. After starting as a freshman and sophomore, Dixon became the Tigers’ first man off the bench last season and earned All-Big 12 Conference recognition in the process.

He described the members of this year’s team in a similar light.

“For the most part, since these guys have been here, I think everybody’s sole goal is winning,” Dixon said. “So I think guys have to sacrifice things in order for us to win, and I think that every single player on this team is capable of that.”

Haith has been working to find roles for both the transfers and the players he has coming back. He said he would like to see Bell and Ross transition into lock-down defenders. He said Bell has the ability to guard the opposing team’s top scorer, a role Matt Pressey held last season as a senior.

Haith said he isn’t sure how the starting lineup or playing minutes will work out at this point, but he is excited with the challenge of coming up with the balance.

The time for learning how to do that has passed, too.

“I look back to last season and how exciting it was for me preparing and figuring out what was the best way for our team to be successful,” Haith said. “I think we have that same job this year, with different bodies and different parts.”