COLUMBIA - The Missouri men's basketball team doesn't have much success to build on this offseason, having won just 19 combined games the past two seasons.
Eleven players have left prematurely since head coach Kim Anderson was hired and fan support for the team is waning.
So what exactly do the Tigers have?
Ask them and they'll tell you that Missouri, at last, has a core group of players committed to turning around a program that won 30 games just four seasons ago.
"I felt like some people might not have been bought in as much," said transfer Jordan Barnett, who joined the team at winter break. "But I think everybody here (now) is bought in and we're going to work on getting better. I think it's going to manifest in a great way."
That core group begins with Missouri's freshman class, all four of whom are expected to return for their sophomore seasons. That's a stark contrast to the class ahead of them. Four of those five players have left the team.
"Throughout the recruiting process, I had a chance to get to know (the freshman class) better," said Anderson, who will return for his third season at Missouri. "I just think they understood a little bit more. I wouldn't say the other guys were unwilling. I just think that this freshman group has kind of bonded together and hopefully made it one of their goals to help get this program back to where we expect it to be."
Freshman Kevin Puryear, who led the Tigers in scoring in 2015-16, asserted he is at Missouri to stay.
"This group of guys that we have right now is just a bunch of blue-collar guys that want to be in the gym at all times," he said. "At some point in the day, I'm sure you'll find one of us in there, so that's a really good trait of a team that wants to get better."
The roster, slimmed after the departures of Wes Clark, D'Angelo Allen, Namon Wright and Tramaine Isabell, has been able to grow tighter in such close confines.
"I think the past two weeks, we've started to really bond already more than even (during) the season," freshman Cullen VanLeer said.
Puryear cited the current roster's chemistry as a reason to believe the Tigers can improve next season.
"The crazy thing about it is I've only known K.J. (Walton), Cullen, Terrence (Phillips), (Adam) Wolf, all those guys for nine months," Puryear said. "I mean, it feels like I've known them forever. But we're all committed to this journey and the fact that we're all staying I think will say a lot on the court. Because for this university, the turnover rate has been really high, so we kind of want to eliminate that and just stick with it."
Chemistry certainly wasn't a plus when Barnett first transferred to Missouri.
"When I first got here, I originally thought it was kind of off," Barnett said. "But I'm feeling like it's starting to develop a little bit more. I mean, we can only build towards it. It can't get worse at all, so we're going to build towards it."
The Tigers will get a chance to establish a closer bond in August when they set off for an international tour in Italy.
"That'll definitely be sort of a team-building experience for sure," Barnett said. "It's not very often that you get to experience something like that, and to experience it together will only help the chemistry."
Helping to establish some consistency is the fact Anderson will be returning. Unlike the mostly departed sophomores, the Tigers' freshmen and incoming high-school seniors all committed to Missouri with the intention of playing for Anderson.
"I feel like we're here and he brought us here and we're here to change it around," VanLeer said. "So we just want to try to get as many wins as possible for him."
Anderson said that the four members of the sophomore class who left - only forward Jakeenan Gant remains - did so for different reasons, but that ultimately each player decided that Missouri was "not a good fit."
The freshman class doesn't foresee that happening to them.
"I think our guys are excited to move on," Anderson said. "... I think they're excited to close the chapter in this book and open up a new one."