Maker Bar, Ballard's 6-foot-10 center, signs with University of Missouri-Kansas City
Ballard High School senior Maker Bar, a top contender for Kentucky’s 2022 Mr. Basketball award, has signed with the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
The 6-foot-10 center averaged 14.6 points, 10.9 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 2.5 blocks and 1.7 steals last season for a Ballard team that went 21-3 and reached the semifinals of the Sweet 16. He joined former stars DeVante Parker and Kelan Martin as the only Ballard players in Chris Renner’s 23 seasons as head coach to finish the season with an efficiency rating over 500, doing so with 10 fewer games.
Bar chose UMKC over Eastern Kentucky, Iona and Western Kentucky.
“Meeting with the staff and meeting with the players, I felt like I was home,” Bar said. “It was the love I got from there. And the No. 1 thing is they have the course I want to do with electrical engineering. I just fell in love with the school.”
Previous coverage: How Maker Bar made it from South Sudan to Ballard
Bar said he also developed a solid relationship with UMKC assistant coach Steve Payne.
“They were the first coaches to come watch me on my first day of practice,” Bar said. “Just the way he cares about me, I’ve never seen any coach do what he does.”
Bar was one of two players in the Class of 2022 to earn first-team All-State honors from The Courier Journal last season, joining Ashland Blazer guard Cole Villers.
Bar was born and raised in South Sudan, a landlocked country of 12.7 million people in East-Central Africa. He moved to the United States in the summer of 2019 and played the past two seasons at Ballard.
UMKC is a member of the NCAA Division I Summit League and finished 11-13 last season. The Kangaroos are 2-2 this season after beating Kansas Christian 99-36 on Wednesday.
“They like the versatility Maker has,” Renner said. “He’s not a low-post player. They see his ability to shoot the basketball, his ability to guard on the perimeter. That was a big selling point to them.”
Jason Frakes: 502-582-4046; jfrakes@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @kyhighs.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ballard basketball star Maker Bar signs with Missouri-Kansas City
