The only fanbase with a lower opinion of the Missouri basketball team than its own is probably Arkansas’. With Mizzou standing 10-15, 4-8 in the SEC, we all know Tiger fans aren’t too thrilled. But you’d have to be understanding of a Razorback fan that has only seen the Tigers when they’ve played Arkansas this year. The season hasn’t exactly been filled with many high points, but two of the lowest have come in the game SEC would like to be Mizzou’s rivalry.
Combined score: Arkansas 163, Mizzou 100
The vast majority of that damage has come in the first half. Combining the opening 20 minutes of the two games, the Arkansas advantage is 95-42. If you want to put lipstick on the Pig performances, Mizzou did trail this one by only 19 at half after an historic 49-15 deficit midway through the game in Fayetteville on January 12.
“We just lost the game,” head coach Cuonzo Martin said. “We didn’t play well. I don’t think it’s anything matchup (wise), but we didn’t play well at all.”
For the record, the final score of Missouri's second try against the Razorbacks was 76-57.
There are losses and then there are Losses. Mizzou has had quite a few of the former and way too many of the latter. Tuesday night as its tenth loss by at least ten points this year. Sure, Missouri made this one a little closer in the second half, taking advantage of either Arkansas incompetence of indifference—maybe a little of both—to creep within 11 at one point, but there wasn’t a single second over the last 20 minutes during which there was any chance the Tigers could win.
The optimists were clinging to hope that maybe this team had at least gotten these types of humiliations out of its system. Missouri hadn’t been winning a lot, but it had at least been competitive. Since the blowout in Fayetteville, the Tigers had only lost two by double figures and they led one of those with six minutes to play. They’d lost by three to Texas A&M back when the Aggies weren’t awful, by one against top-ranked Auburn and by one to Florida. There were a couple of wins over Ole Miss mixed in.
But reality came in dark red on Tuesday. The game was tied at four when the Razorbacks went on a 15-0 run. The question then wasn’t if but by how much. The answer ended up being 19, though that was more a minor detail than anything that actually mattered.
There have been two common themes in this season: Getting blown out in the first half and struggling to hang on to leads in the second. Missouri has often been out of games after 20 minutes. When it is still in them, it has had trouble finishing. In games against A&M, Alabama, Auburn and Florida, Mizzou led for 112 of a possible 160 minutes. The Tigers lost all four.
“There was a stretch there we lost game by one, two, three points,” Boogie Coleman said. “Those just came down to the fundamentals and basics and we just didn’t know how to finish games.”
Martin was beating the drum in answer to pretty much every question on Tuesday that this was just a bad night to have a bad night. He’s right, it was a bad night. But there have been quite a few of them. I know it’s not breaking news that Missouri is bad, but I’m supposed to write about the team and there are only so many ways I can say it is bad. On Tuesday, it was more bad than usual.
“We didn’t play well tonight, but we’ve improved in a lot of areas offensively, defensively,” Martin said. “You look at the league numbers, non-conference as opposed to conference, there’s great improvements.”
Maybe so, but not nearly enough. Nobody’s demanding that Mizzou be Arkansas’ equal right now, although it doesn’t seem like a ridiculous ask since the Tigers did win by 13 in Fayetteville and lost in overtime to the Hogs in Columbia just last year. But maybe making the Razorbacks break a sweat at some point would spice things up a little bit. Given two chances this season, Missouri hasn’t done it.
“They didn’t play the way we know how to play,” Martin said.
He’s right in one sense. This was a bad game. But there have been so many this year. They happened early in the form of a loss to UMKC and a thumping by Florida State. They happened at the midpoint with an 89-point deficit against Kansas, Illinois and Kentucky in a four-game stretch around Christmas. And they’ve happened lately too with four double-digit losses in the last 11 games and a 70-62 clunker at Vanderbilt last week.
Yes, we’ll grant Martin that Missouri is at times playing better than it did early in the season. Not really for 40 minutes, but at least for stretches. But the Tigers have still lost seven of nine and being better than they were in the awful beginning of the season isn’t really a bar for which to shoot.
The question, which will now get its answer in just about a month when this season is mercifully over, is whether improvement is enough that Cuonzo Martin will get a chance to continue it next season. I don’t know the answer to that question. As much as people don’t want to believe it, I don’t think the decision has been made either way. But if he finds himself on the wrong end of it when it is eventually made, Arkansas is going to be a big reason why.
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