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BASKETBALL Bubble Watch

MIZDSP
theathletic.com

Bubble Watch: The road to March begins with 5 locks

Purdue, Arizona, Houston, Tennessee and Alabama are all Day 1 locks for the 2023 Bubble Watch.
theathletic.com theathletic.com

Obvious Athletic paywall, but the SEC breaks down as following:

Locks: Alabama, Tennessee
Should Be In: Auburn Missouri
Work Left to Do: Arkansas, Kentucky, A&M, Mississippi State

Missouri Write-Up:

Missouri (16-5, 4-4; NET: 44, SOS: 46): Hey, Missouri got good quick. First-year Dennis Gates may not have arrived with fanfare, but thus far he is proving to be a savvy hire; Gates took no time at all to install a high-pressure, uptempo system designed to maximize the strengths of the players he collected in one fell transfer portal swoop. So far, so good: The Tigers are coming off a massive win over a hot Iowa State team in the Big 12/SEC Challenge; have wins over Illinois, Arkansas and Kentucky; and haven’t suffered a non-Quadrant 1 loss. Interestingly, the predictive metrics don’t like them nearly as much as, say, strength of record, which ranks Mizzou 18th. Blame blowout losses in a few big games, and maybe some schedule-strength issues in the noncon. Otherwise, there’s not much to dislike about Gates’ first Tigers team sheet.
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NEW STORY TEN THOUGHTS FOR MONDAY MORNING

GabeD
1) We start with what might have been Missouri's most impressive win of a very impressive basketball season. The Tigers beat Iowa State 78-61 on Saturday. The Cyclones came in as the nation's No. 12 team (10 in the NET) and led for all of 44 seconds. The game was never closer than ten points in the second half (and only at 10 for 17 seconds). The win might put Missouri back in the top 25. Whether it does or not is relatively immaterial, but it's a nice reward for players and fans to see a number next to your name. What's more important is that it more or less assured Mizzou will return to the NCAA Tournament. Obviously I have to hedge a little bit here. The only time you can call a team a tournament lock is when it can lose every game the rest of the season and still get in. Missouri cannot lose every game the rest of the season. That would leave the Tigers 16-16 with an 11-game losing streak and multiple bad losses and that team is not getting in. But Mizzou has home games against LSU, South Carolina and Ole Miss. It would be shocking to lose one of those games. That leaves eight other games. Missouri needs to win probably two of them to lock up a bid. Could Missouri still miss out? Sure. But it would be stunning. I've spent most of the season telling you I will not consider the season a failure if the Tigers don't make the tournament. That's changed. Missing out on the tournament would now be a failure because there is no reason to think they will miss out.

2) So let me join the long line of those throwing bouquets at Dennis Gates. The job he has done is remarkable. He took over a program that had bottomed out (well, not completely bottomed out; that happened in 2016). The Tigers won 12 games last season. He was hired on March 22 and had to completely remake the roster. He kept Kobe Brown, which was probably the most important thing on his plate when he got the job. He then scoured the country for transfers. He got one that had played high-major basketball before. Nick Honor at the time looked like a serviceable point guard, possibly even a backup point guard. He had averaged 7.9 points, 2.3 assists, 1.3 rebounds and 1.4 steals in 57 games at Clemson. He shot 39.4% from the field and 34.5% from three point range. It was fine, but it was nothing special. Honor is now averaging more points, assists, rebounds and steals at Missouri than he did at Clemson and is shooting a higher percentage from the field and from three-point range. His turnovers have gone from 1.0 a game to 1.1. All while playing five more minutes per game.

The rest of the roster was filled out with career mid-major and low-major players. Those players came from John A. Logan CC, Garden City CC, Northern Iowa, Milwaukee, Missouri State and Cleveland State. There was optimism among the fanbase because fans always think the best. But the skeptics weren't unwarranted in their thoughts. How were you going to take a roster full of junior college and mid-major players and turn it into a good SEC basketball team?

Gates has. I'll spend the next couple of points talking about how he did it.

3) The first thing is the reason I liked Gates as a candidate before Missouri had made the hire: Player development.

Gates had a reputation as a recruiter at Florida State and he landed some talent. But more than that, he had a part in helping turn some players who weren't supposed to be stars into stars. Here are some of the Seminoles players who became more than they were supposed to:

Mfiondu Kabengele -- three-star became a first-round NBA draft pick
Trent Forrest -- Four-star, but not nationally ranked is still in the NBA
Devin Vassell -- Three-star is with the Spurs

The Seminoles got quite a few top 100 players while Gates was on staff. But they also took some guys who weren't supposed to be pros and made them pros. Obviously that's not all on Gates, but he had something to do with it, as did C.Y. Young. Yes, you have to land great players who come in ready to contribute to be good. But you're not going to have a roster full of five-stars at places like Florida State or Missouri. You can get some of them, but you're going to have to have some other guys that become more than what people think they are. Gates has a track record of being able to do that.

4) But what's most impressive about this team is the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That's really what coaching is. You have to get guys to accept their roles. And every single player on this team has accepted his role. On one night, Mo Diarra is grabbing 12 rebounds and has people talking about how big a key he is to the team going forward. On the next, he plays six minutes while his teammates beat a top ten team. Isiaih Mosley is sidelined for a month and then becomes a starter. D'Moi Hodge can't throw the ball in the ocean from a boat for four games and then makes 11 threes over the next two. Virtually every player on this roster has had nights where they are a major reason for a win and others where he is sitting on the bench watching because he doesn't have it that night. And Gates has pushed the right buttons a whole lot more than he's pushed the wrong ones. But through it all, he's kept every one of them engaged. They may not BE the star that night, but they're available to be the star and ready to go if Gates calls on them. And more often than not, they've answered the call.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is based on the talent on the roster, this team shouldn't be as good as it is. But it is. The players deserve a lot of credit for that. So does the coach.

5) Obviously, we don't know how this ride is going to end. My guess is at some point the defense and rebounding is going to catch up to them and they're going to lose a game 92-88 or something like that. And you're going to be disappointed because the season ended (probably short of a national title or a Final Four). All but one team ends the season with a loss (the NIT and whatever other tournaments are out there don't count). So it's not really going out on a limb saying Missouri's probably will end that way.

That said, this is a team that CAN win games in the NCAA Tournament. It can make the second weekend. It's already proven that. It's beaten four top-25 teams. It beat two of them back to back in Illinois and Kentucky. Given the right matchup, making shots on the right day, this team can advance. It's what makes the NCAA Tournament so fun. You don't have to be the best team in the country. You just have to be better than the team you play on that specific day. Missouri could lose in the first round. It could also make the second weekend and if that happens, who knows?
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