Missouri Tigers basketball team adds prolific scorer through NCAA transfer portal

Coach Dennis Gates’ Missouri Tigers men’s basketball team has added a proven scorer via the NCAA transfer portal.

The Tigers announced Wednesday that Marques Warrick, a guard who enters the 2024-25 season leading all active Division I players with 2,246 career points, has been added to their roster.

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Warrick played at Northern Kentucky for the past four seasons. He’s Northern Kentucky’s all-time leading scorer and, as a transfer, was ranked as high as No. 20 (by Rivals) among players in the portal this offseason.

“Marques is a high-scoring combo guard who has produced every year of his college career,” Gates said in an MU news release announcing Warrick’s arrival. “We saw firsthand how talented he was during our time in the Horizon League and know how difficult he is to prepare for.”

Northern Kentucky went 22-13 and won the 2023 Horizon League Tournament to gain an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Seeded No. 16, the Norse trailed top-seeded Houston by just three points at halftime and went on to lose 63-52 in the Midwest Region.

A four-time All-Horizon League honoree, Warrick is the Tigers’ third signee during the spring transfer window. He joins two-time All-Big Ten guard Tony Perkins (formerly of Iowa) and former UT Martin wing Jacob Crews as newcomers to Gates’ MU squad.

That trio ranks as the No. 6 incoming transfer class in the nation; Mizzou also signed the nation’s No. 4-ranked freshman class in November.

Warrick averaged 19.9 points per game in 2023-24 and was one of just two players nationwide to scored at least 600 points in each of the last two seasons. He also averages 2.6 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.1 steals per game.

“Marques is great at creating his own shot and his ability to score translates at every level,” Gates said in the news release. “He is a great compliment to Tony Perkins and the combination of that backcourt puts us among the top of the SEC.”