1. Remember the pre-game thoughts and keys? Mizzou did pretty much none of that. I spent more time writing that than Mizzou did putting itself in a position to win tonight. No sense in hashing that out again.
2. I hadn't seen a lot of Auburn this season. I know they won at Tennessee, which is impressive. I know their numbers are good. But tonight, despite our deficiencies, they impressed me. Not in a "they're gonna make the tournament," type way. But if they do what they did tonight, a "they're going to give a lot of teams a run for their money, once there," way.
3. Saturday I thought we had a tough matchup based on personnel. I still think that. Tonight ended up being a tough matchup, but I don't think it had to be that way. Mizzou allowed this game to be played WAY too fast. I may be off on this, but not by much, when it was 49-48, Auburn went on a 24-5 run in 4 minutes. Beyond the fact that 5 is bad, how does a team trying to dictate tempo, slowly, allow 24 points in ~4 minutes? That's 6 points per minute of game clock. The answer: By the game being...WAY....TOO...FAST. And it cost them. They were in it for ~30 minutes, and then that happened.
4. As far as where we go from here...I'm not going to argue it one way or another. Saturday was ugly. Tonight was awful. It's the team's first consecutive losses of the year. The offense was dreadful Saturday. The defense was worse tonight. I still think for Mizzou to compete with good teams, they need to make it ugly and hit timely shots. Neither of those things happened tonight. We'll see where they go from here. It's either gonna snowball, or they're going to dust themselves off and get back in it. There's no real other option at this point.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
-Tilmon: Tonight wasn't new in the respect that he was rendered irrelevant due to foul issues. It was the first time it appeared to affect him in other facets of the game. That's going to be something to watch. I appreciate Nikko's effort, but he simply isn't a replacement for an effective Tilmon. That's concerning.
-We still need a point guard.
-It was good to see the arena full, and loud when the team performed for brief moments.
The season isn't unfolding the way we thought/hoped it would in October. That'll happen. The ending hasn't been written yet, and it's up to them to determine how it will go.
2. I hadn't seen a lot of Auburn this season. I know they won at Tennessee, which is impressive. I know their numbers are good. But tonight, despite our deficiencies, they impressed me. Not in a "they're gonna make the tournament," type way. But if they do what they did tonight, a "they're going to give a lot of teams a run for their money, once there," way.
3. Saturday I thought we had a tough matchup based on personnel. I still think that. Tonight ended up being a tough matchup, but I don't think it had to be that way. Mizzou allowed this game to be played WAY too fast. I may be off on this, but not by much, when it was 49-48, Auburn went on a 24-5 run in 4 minutes. Beyond the fact that 5 is bad, how does a team trying to dictate tempo, slowly, allow 24 points in ~4 minutes? That's 6 points per minute of game clock. The answer: By the game being...WAY....TOO...FAST. And it cost them. They were in it for ~30 minutes, and then that happened.
4. As far as where we go from here...I'm not going to argue it one way or another. Saturday was ugly. Tonight was awful. It's the team's first consecutive losses of the year. The offense was dreadful Saturday. The defense was worse tonight. I still think for Mizzou to compete with good teams, they need to make it ugly and hit timely shots. Neither of those things happened tonight. We'll see where they go from here. It's either gonna snowball, or they're going to dust themselves off and get back in it. There's no real other option at this point.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
-Tilmon: Tonight wasn't new in the respect that he was rendered irrelevant due to foul issues. It was the first time it appeared to affect him in other facets of the game. That's going to be something to watch. I appreciate Nikko's effort, but he simply isn't a replacement for an effective Tilmon. That's concerning.
-We still need a point guard.
-It was good to see the arena full, and loud when the team performed for brief moments.
The season isn't unfolding the way we thought/hoped it would in October. That'll happen. The ending hasn't been written yet, and it's up to them to determine how it will go.
