Star Big Man Recruit Yves Missi To Visit Baylor Thursday
While football season is in full swing, it has been a busy week for the Baylor Bears basketball program. Over the weekend, the top recruit in the 2024 class, Tre Johnson out of Lake Highlands (TX), came to visit.
Wednesday, they lost star Beaumont United (TX) guard recruit Wesley Yates to the Washington Huskies.
The next day, they just turn around and welcome another one of the best players in the 2024 class Yves Missi into the facility.
Missi is a traditional back-to-the-basket center at 6'11" and 215 pounds but he has great athleticism that makes his game really malleable. Although he looks like a pure athlete, he also seems to understand his role as a big man well, meaning he actually has post moves and appears to time his blocked shots really well. With the development of the wing player, it isn't always easy to find pure centers that understand their role anymore.
Now playing for Prolific Prep in Napa, California, Missi is originally from Cameroon, having emigrated to the United States in 2021.
Coach Scott Drew has made a living at Baylor attracting international players, including several from Africa, such as NBA lottery pick Ekpe Udoh and current centers Flo Thamba and Jonathan Tchamwa-Tchachoua, the latter of whom also hails from Cameroon.
Because of his athleticism and footwork, Missi could well fit that mold of a Thamba or a Tchamwa-Tchachoua on the defensive end, both huge paint disrupters that make those suffocating Baylor defenses tick.
Like Johnson, Missi is another 2024 prospect who lit up the Peach Jam tournament in Atlanta this summer, leading to his prospect skyrocketing, with most publications listing him as a top-10 player in the class.
So far, the Bears have landed two commitments from the 2024 class in Jason Asemota and Rob Wright, but both of them are consistently ranked in the nation's top 60 prospects.
Even with how successful the Bears have been the last few seasons with a guard-heavy rotation, having a dominant big man could solidify the Bears as having maybe the best 2024 recruiting class in the country, albeit with a long way to go.
The Bears offered Missi in May, and Drew visited Prolific Prep in December.
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You can follow Cameron Stuart on Twitter @RealCamStuart
Covering Baylor for Inside The Bears and the Locked on Baylor podcast. You can follow me for more Baylor content at @realcamstuart on Twitter. Originally from Rockland, Massachusetts and a Baylor alum, so I might mix the occasional bias and/or Boston sports tweet in there every once in a while.