Missouri men’s basketball coach Kim Anderson knows his personnel. He knows he has a young team, with six freshmen on a twelve-man roster.

“When you’re dealing with these freshmen, the biggest thing is trying to get them to play consistently,” Anderson said.

And he has a plan to account for the multitude of young shooters on his roster.

“We’re a team that’s evolving from an offensive standpoint,” Anderson said. “We want to try and throw it inside to get some easy baskets.”

Anderson will be relying on forwards Ryan Rosburg and Keanau Post for his interior offense, and likes how they’ve progressed to this point. He says the team will often be throwing the ball inside, but how they’ll accomplish that remains to be seen.

But in coaching his two bigs to be aggressive, Anderson cautions them not to think shoot-first if there’s a man open outside.

“They have to do a good job of not only scoring themselves, but (remembering) that just because we throw it to them doesn’t mean they can’t throw it back out,” Anderson said. “That’s something that we continually work on. I think that we’ll find that as we get into the season when we do throw it inside, there’s going to be people clawing at them and they’re going be have to kick it back out.”

Anderson is also preaching that Rosburg and Post have to be conscientious on defense and not commit careless fouls.

“We can’t afford to have them get in foul trouble because after that we get thin,” he said. “Then we have to go to (Johnathan Williams III), Jakeenan (Gant) and Hayden (Barnard). Those (two) have to be careful, and in order to do that they have to move their feet better.”

Rosburg is entering his third season with the Tigers, making him the longest-tenured player on the roster. But Post, who is going into just his second season with the Tigers as a senior, has stood out to Rosburg early.

“I think he realizes that this is his last go-around and he wants to do it right,” Rosburg said of his teammate. “We have a whole new team and not a lot of guys saw who he was last year, so he’s really taking it upon himself to be the vocal leader and call people out.”

Rosburg marvels at how Post has managed to back up his leadership style with his on-court performance.

“It’s carried over perfectly,” Rosburg said. “When he’s telling everyone else what to do, he knows he also has to hold himself accountable. He knows everyone else is is looking at him to do certain things and play the right way, and I think that’s given him more confidence.”

But Rosburg knows that as the team’s most senior player, he has to play a role in leading the young squad as well.

“Being here three years, I have all these younger guys asking me about different things that I never even thought of as a freshman,” Rosburg said. “I’m trying to help them with anything that I think they would want to know, and they always know they can come to me with anything else.”