After a tough summer on the grassroots circuit, the point guard is refining his game with Father Tolton, focusing on building strength and consistency that translates at Mizzou.
QUINCY, Ill. — Blake Pingeton hadn’t crossed half court, and Modesto Christian assistant coach Chris Teevan’s had already started to wince.
He knew a familiar sequence would unspool: Father Tolton’s Aaron Rowe pushing the ball up the floor, drawing in a couple of defenders, casually pitching a kick out backward to Pingeton, who would step into an open 3-pointer. It had already unfolded twice, and sure enough, the sequence repeated with 3:04 left in the third quarter.
Teevan tilted his head back gently and huffed. Then, he called timeout. You didn’t have to strain inside the modestly filled Blue Devil Gym to hear the resigned dismay from his huddle.
“Guys, we talked about this,” Teevan said. “Stop the ball and locate the shooter. It’s all they do. It can’t keep happening.”
Near Tolton’s bench, Rowe’s face had curled into a cheeky smirk.
In those moments, the point guard resembles the prospect firmly rooted among the nation’s top 25 talents this time last year. Back then, it was easy to frame the Columbia native’s pledge to Missouri as a coup. Thirteen months later, they’re highlights for a table-setter trying to regain his form after a brutal grassroots season ($) on Nike’s EYBL circuit eroded his stock.
By last September, Rowe had slipped to No. 77 in 247Sports’ composite rating. And while those in his camp won’t delve into his specifics, there were personal matters away from the floor gnawing at him. So, Rowe and his inner circle concluded he would benefit from a short hiatus. He halted workouts with his trainer, Pep Stanciel, and spent last fall simply being a teenager experiencing his senior year of high school.
“It let me step back for a minute and relax,” Rowe said last Saturday. “I wanted to spend time with my family and my mom. I wanted to get back to who I am and be around true friends. Just get back to where I started from.”
He and Stanciel resumed workouts in December while Tolton’s season tipped off. So, it made sense to check in on Rowe, which means settling in for a 9 a.m. local tip at the Quincy Shootout. Based on the box score alone, Rowe’s nine points on 4 of 10 shooting in a 77-71 victory won’t leave you agog.
Yet he handed out seven assists with relative ease, applied steady on-ball pressure to notch two steals, and took shots that flowed naturally from Tolton’s offense. Within Tolton’s system, Rowe functions as a facilitator alongside Zay Wilson, a friend since childhood, a job that runs counter to perceptions of him as a bucket-getter.
“We already know what we’re about to do just based off of our instincts,” Rowe said.
Sharing the floor with another ball-handler isn’t foreign to Rowe, either.
Before his sophomore season, he decamped from Tolton to join up with Link Academy, a basketball factory outside Branson, where he sometimes saw split duty with five-star guard Eliot Cadeau. If he had not transferred back to Tolton in October 2023, Rowe would have jockeyed with Tre Johnson, Labaron Philon, and Jasper Johnson. Two summers ago, he shared lead guard duties with Curtis Givens III and T.O. Barrett, now a freshman at MU, while playing up a year with Mokan Elite.
Yet he had never actually played with Wilson. And Rowe’s reintegration to the Tolton rotation, which came midway through his junior season, proved stilted. With more time and consideration, the pair has found a natural division of labor.
“We run different kinds of sets, but at our heart, we’re really a Princeton team,” Osborne said. “We just want to find some balance on the floor and create driving lanes for them. It helps everyone because those two are so adept at getting downhill.”
Every program emphasizes different facets of that time-worn system. Tolton’s most familiar play call is a chin set and stationing Pingeton at the elbow for the initial action. From there, the Trailblazers can flow into five-out alignments and actions that rely on slips, pops and flares.
“I like playing in it,” Rowe said, “because Mizzou does a lot of that.”
It’s also a drastic shift from his layover at Link, which used five-out alignments but had enough talent packed on the roster to keep actions simple. “It wasn’t as much motion,” Rowe recalled. “It was like ball screens all the time.”
It should also inform your perspective when settling in to watch Rowe with Tolton. Without a bevy of pick-and-rolls, you aren’t likely to see the kind of jaw-dropping dimes destined to be spliced together by videographers camped out on the baseline for Instagram reels. Just two of Rowe’s assists came in the half-court, and both entailed pinging a pass to Wilson cutting on an angle from the slot.
While Wilson and Rowe are similar in stature, Wilson carries a bit more mass in his core, which allows him to absorb more contact and play directly to the rim. So, it falls to Rowe to find his buddy in spots and actions where he’s most at-home operating.
“I like putting him in good positions,” Rowe said. “I like making Zay look good. I like making Blake look good. Scoring isn’t all there is to me. I can score it if I wanted to, but giving out assists is cool, too.”
As you can see in the snippets embedded above, four of Rowe’s assists simply entailed identifying an open shooter while running a secondary break or early in the shot clock. And he also made a routine hit-ahead pass to Wilson, who drew a foul attacking the rim.
Blasé as it seems, these are also the decisions coach Dennis Gates will expect to handle when making the short trip to MU’s campus.
When Rowe hunted for buckets, you could still spot the traits that had scouts marking him early on as a freshman.
After creating a deflection and steal, he gained an easy lift-off to mash down a lob from Wilson. As the clock ticked down to the end of the third quarter, he exploited the ample cushion offered by a defender to throw on the breaks for a pull-up at the foul stripe. Later, he casually shifted through the gears to accelerate past two defenders out of a spread pick-and-roll and converted with an extension finish.
“What we wanted to focus on with him was getting to his spots with confidence,” Osborne said. “When he can get to his spots, he’s fine. It’s also allowed him to trust that guys will be where they need to be. When that’s happening, he can play freely and let his athleticism take over.”
However, you could also make unoriginal observations when Rowe picked MU. He could stand to add some strength to play through contact once he put two feet in the paint. Even in a pattern-based offense, his pick-and-roll reads needed refining. And while the mechanics are mostly sound, Rowe’s jumper is more streaky than reliable.
Even now, those notes are still as salient as ever.
Whether it’s a ball screen, handoff or isolation touch, Rowe routinely got to the rim, but his finishing proved spotty. To compensate, he used the rim as a shield on a reverse and tried to deploy a floater. And on a pair of dribble jumpers, he created ample air space but wasn’t entirely on balance and didn’t get enough lift.
The remedy isn’t more time working through drills. Rowe is acutely aware that the solution is to reshape his little frame. “I gotta get bigger for the SEC next season,” he said. That starts with upping his calorie intake – intelligently.
“It’s not necessarily putting more weight on him just to get him a little bigger,” Osborne said. “We want him to keep the pace he has. It’s more [about] how do you give him functional strength, right? He has to match up with bigger guards in the SEC and take bumps from SEC bigs when he gets two feet in the paint. But you still want him to get there easily.”
As MU courted Rowe, he grew fond of how Tamar Bates was given latitude to attack in the open court and how Sean East collapsed defenses meandering around the paint from Pistol sets. “It just looked like he did that stuff so easily,” Rowe said with a chuckle. “And every time, he got a floater.”
Those aspirations are easier to achieve once Rowe boosts his strength, which will truly start in earnest when he reports to workouts this summer. In the near term, the goal is more modest. “I don’t eat enough,” Rowe said. “I have to get my calorie count up.”
As for honing Rowe’s actual skill set, he’s clear about what needs work. “I’m trying to get my jump shot more consistent. Added Osborne, “He’s got to stretch the floor a little bit.”
The tweaks, however, happen below the waist. Rowe’s rarely played without the ball in his hands, and when it’s not, he’s spent more time as a stationary spacer. Coming off a screen sounds simple enough, but the footwork changes depending on the type of screen and can be influenced by where it unfolds on the floor.
Drills with Stanciel try to replicate game situations and speed. Mimicking those conditions only goes so far. Those skills will truly imprint with consequential reps against a live defense. And it inevitably ties back to Rowe’s strength and conditioning.
Gaining strength would do more than allow Rowe to play through a defender’s chest and attempt lower-risk finishes. That core would enable Rowe to jump-stop, play off two feet, remain on balance and give him more options beyond one-dribble jumpers at the elbow.
“All that work starts with your core,” Osborne said. “You’ve seen so many times that he can stop on a dime, but he can’t control himself because that’s where strength and footwork come in. He’s made massive improvements already. I’m really looking forward to seeing his growth at the next level when it all comes together.”
Turbulence is also a given as a player develops. Through Rowe’s junior season, you could chalk any of Rowe’s inefficiency up to facing older talent. Now, the explanation proves more straightforward: His peers matured physically and closed the gap.
Now, it’s about seeing the response Rowe mounts moving forward.
“I played against all of those people that moved in front of me,” Rowe said. “I’m not going to say I’m obviously better. But I know what I can do against them.”