Let me say first of all: These games happen to most teams. They particularly happen to young teams early in the season on the road. What will follow is not jumping from the ship or giving up on the season, but rather an honest assessment of what happened tonight.
This was Missouri's 36th consecutive road loss. It looked a lot like many of the previous 35. Missouri never led the game. They went through a couple of crazy long droughts. They shot the ball terribly. The took a million jumpers. They did not look particularly interested. They never made anything approaching a comeback.
So, yeah, it was ugly. And singling out any individual player on a night this bad is really unfair. I will single out Reed Nikko on the plus side, who was Missouri's best player and it wasn't particularly close. Everybody else was not good.
Missouri is not as good as it looked in the first two games (against teams that are worse than average) and it is not as bad is it looked tonight. Here are the things that would concern me the most coming out of this game:
1. Jeremiah Tilmon can't stay on the floor. He's had ten fouls in 16 minutes and fouled out in two games. That's almost impossible. Sure, you can say some of them were bad calls if you want, but not all of them. And if they're gonna call them, you have to adjust to it.
2. I'm not sold Missouri has a reliable point guard yet. We'll see. I still think it will eventually be Blake Harris. But it doesn't look like it is yet.
3. Where was the energy? I mean, they just looked flat all day and never really had anyone that looked into it. Why?
Let's remember, they're playing without their best player. Any team in America will look different if you take its best player away. It would be good if the Tigers got theirs back soon.
This was Missouri's 36th consecutive road loss. It looked a lot like many of the previous 35. Missouri never led the game. They went through a couple of crazy long droughts. They shot the ball terribly. The took a million jumpers. They did not look particularly interested. They never made anything approaching a comeback.
So, yeah, it was ugly. And singling out any individual player on a night this bad is really unfair. I will single out Reed Nikko on the plus side, who was Missouri's best player and it wasn't particularly close. Everybody else was not good.
Missouri is not as good as it looked in the first two games (against teams that are worse than average) and it is not as bad is it looked tonight. Here are the things that would concern me the most coming out of this game:
1. Jeremiah Tilmon can't stay on the floor. He's had ten fouls in 16 minutes and fouled out in two games. That's almost impossible. Sure, you can say some of them were bad calls if you want, but not all of them. And if they're gonna call them, you have to adjust to it.
2. I'm not sold Missouri has a reliable point guard yet. We'll see. I still think it will eventually be Blake Harris. But it doesn't look like it is yet.
3. Where was the energy? I mean, they just looked flat all day and never really had anyone that looked into it. Why?
Let's remember, they're playing without their best player. Any team in America will look different if you take its best player away. It would be good if the Tigers got theirs back soon.
