*Thank God for Kobe Brown. He was all over the place in the first half. Very active, very aggressive. 13 points on eight shots. That was one off his season high in the first 20 minutes. Ended up with a career high 21. Best player on the floor and it wasn’t very close.
*Missouri is very reliant on Jeremiah Tilmon, we know. But it’s maybe even more reliant on Xavier Pinson. And when Pinson is…unengaged…it’s tough to score. That’s what the first half looked like to me. Pinson simply chucked threes. He didn’t seem interested in driving or initiating the offense. And he got blown by a few times on defense.
First half +/- Pinson: -7 in 10 minutes, Drew Buggs +13 in 10 minutes. Plus/minus ain't perfect. But that's not coincidental.
That shouldn’t happen from a junior who has played as much as Pinson has just six days after his coach dragged him publicly for not going all out at Ole Miss. But it did. It’s not just the production that’s been inconsistent with him for three years. It’s the effort. And that’s hard to not know which guy is going to show up on any given night. Pinson’s +/- tonight was minus-19 (side note, it wasn’t even the worst on the team because Javon Pickett was minus-20). Both Pickett and Pinson basically cost Missouri nearly a full point for every minute they were on the floor. It’s not a perfect stat, but it’s reflective of the game I watched.
*In the end, Missouri’s three best players are Jeremiah Tilmon, Xavier Pinson and Dru Smith. Tilmon wasn’t there. The other two didn’t play well (Dru failed to hit double figures for the first time in 11 games and had as many turnovers as field goals—4). Missouri isn’t winning games when it doesn’t get anything out of its three best players.
*The start of the second half has been a spot Mizzou has played poorly at times this year. Not tonight. The Tigers scored the first nine out of the locker room to lead by 13. I thought briefly Missouri was going to cruise in the second half (maybe they did too). Pinson had two drives in the first three minutes of the second half. One led to an open three by Mark Smith, which he made. Smith didn’t go crazy, but he made half his shots and was active. He ended up with 11 points, 7 rebounds and three steals. Maybe a game that can get him going and build his confidence a little bit.
*I guess we got an answer to “Will Torrence Watson play more going forward?” He played six minutes.
*I’m not gonna let you get away with “Well, they didn’t have Tilmon so…” No. Not gonna do that. Not tonight. If you can’t afford to lose one player and beat a team in the bottom third of the SEC, your roster isn’t good enough. Tilmon’s a good player. But this doesn’t get to get thrown in with the MPJ or Jontay injuries. It’s not even a little the same. We’ve talked a lot about how Mizzou doesn’t have much of a margin for error. That’s on how the roster was built. That’s on the last two recruiting classes. Period.
*A caller on our post-game show brought up an interesting point: Missouri’s big edge this year was experience. That mattered a lot at the beginning of the season with so many teams bringing in new pieces, both transfers and freshmen. Does it matter less now that we’re three months in and teams have been playing and practicing together a lot? Have they made up what they lost to Mizzou in terms of experience over those lost workouts and practices in the summer? Are teams catching up to Mizzou because they’ve always had more talent and now they are closing the experience gap? I don’t know the answer, but I think it’s an interesting perspective to think about.
*I think this team still makes the NCAA Tournament. I’m pretty confident of it. I think it’s a six or seven seed if they just beat South Carolina, A&M and Ole Miss. And at the beginning of the season, I said I thought that was this team’s ceiling. So it’s not all bad and everything is not lost at all.
But ten days ago we were wondering if they could win the SEC. Since then, they’ve lost three straight games to teams that were below them in the standings at the tip. They’ve been outscored by 39 points after halftime in those three games. You know that Kentucky team everybody is having fun making fun of for being the worst Kentucky team this side of Eddie Sutton? They’re now a whole one game behind Missouri in the SEC standings. We don’t need to talk about seeding anymore. We don’t need to talk about a double bye in the SEC Tournament. We need to talk about finding enough duct tape and bailing wire to get this thing to the NCAA Tournament some how some way. Like I said, I still think they will. But it’s no longer a sure thing. Who’d have thought we were saying that a week ago? Slumps happen. Missouri better pull out of this one by Saturday.
*Missouri is very reliant on Jeremiah Tilmon, we know. But it’s maybe even more reliant on Xavier Pinson. And when Pinson is…unengaged…it’s tough to score. That’s what the first half looked like to me. Pinson simply chucked threes. He didn’t seem interested in driving or initiating the offense. And he got blown by a few times on defense.
First half +/- Pinson: -7 in 10 minutes, Drew Buggs +13 in 10 minutes. Plus/minus ain't perfect. But that's not coincidental.
That shouldn’t happen from a junior who has played as much as Pinson has just six days after his coach dragged him publicly for not going all out at Ole Miss. But it did. It’s not just the production that’s been inconsistent with him for three years. It’s the effort. And that’s hard to not know which guy is going to show up on any given night. Pinson’s +/- tonight was minus-19 (side note, it wasn’t even the worst on the team because Javon Pickett was minus-20). Both Pickett and Pinson basically cost Missouri nearly a full point for every minute they were on the floor. It’s not a perfect stat, but it’s reflective of the game I watched.
*In the end, Missouri’s three best players are Jeremiah Tilmon, Xavier Pinson and Dru Smith. Tilmon wasn’t there. The other two didn’t play well (Dru failed to hit double figures for the first time in 11 games and had as many turnovers as field goals—4). Missouri isn’t winning games when it doesn’t get anything out of its three best players.
*The start of the second half has been a spot Mizzou has played poorly at times this year. Not tonight. The Tigers scored the first nine out of the locker room to lead by 13. I thought briefly Missouri was going to cruise in the second half (maybe they did too). Pinson had two drives in the first three minutes of the second half. One led to an open three by Mark Smith, which he made. Smith didn’t go crazy, but he made half his shots and was active. He ended up with 11 points, 7 rebounds and three steals. Maybe a game that can get him going and build his confidence a little bit.
*I guess we got an answer to “Will Torrence Watson play more going forward?” He played six minutes.
*I’m not gonna let you get away with “Well, they didn’t have Tilmon so…” No. Not gonna do that. Not tonight. If you can’t afford to lose one player and beat a team in the bottom third of the SEC, your roster isn’t good enough. Tilmon’s a good player. But this doesn’t get to get thrown in with the MPJ or Jontay injuries. It’s not even a little the same. We’ve talked a lot about how Mizzou doesn’t have much of a margin for error. That’s on how the roster was built. That’s on the last two recruiting classes. Period.
*A caller on our post-game show brought up an interesting point: Missouri’s big edge this year was experience. That mattered a lot at the beginning of the season with so many teams bringing in new pieces, both transfers and freshmen. Does it matter less now that we’re three months in and teams have been playing and practicing together a lot? Have they made up what they lost to Mizzou in terms of experience over those lost workouts and practices in the summer? Are teams catching up to Mizzou because they’ve always had more talent and now they are closing the experience gap? I don’t know the answer, but I think it’s an interesting perspective to think about.
*I think this team still makes the NCAA Tournament. I’m pretty confident of it. I think it’s a six or seven seed if they just beat South Carolina, A&M and Ole Miss. And at the beginning of the season, I said I thought that was this team’s ceiling. So it’s not all bad and everything is not lost at all.
But ten days ago we were wondering if they could win the SEC. Since then, they’ve lost three straight games to teams that were below them in the standings at the tip. They’ve been outscored by 39 points after halftime in those three games. You know that Kentucky team everybody is having fun making fun of for being the worst Kentucky team this side of Eddie Sutton? They’re now a whole one game behind Missouri in the SEC standings. We don’t need to talk about seeding anymore. We don’t need to talk about a double bye in the SEC Tournament. We need to talk about finding enough duct tape and bailing wire to get this thing to the NCAA Tournament some how some way. Like I said, I still think they will. But it’s no longer a sure thing. Who’d have thought we were saying that a week ago? Slumps happen. Missouri better pull out of this one by Saturday.
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