With the summer lull fully upon us, I’m going to go through and rank the wins I think are the Tigers’ best of the Dennis Gates era in Columbia.
It’s obviously not a terribly long tenure, but we’re heading back almost as far as we can for No. 10.
No. 10: Beating No. 19 Kentucky 89-75 in Columbia, Dec. 28, 2022
The first non-conference schedule of Dennis Gates’ time with the Tigers brought a lot of excitement to Mizzou Arena.
The Tigers were exciting, they were playing a new brand of basketball that was fun to watch and they started the season 9-0. They dropped that first Border War in Columbia in more than a decade, but rebounded with a couple of wins, including a big one for Braggin’ Rights right before Christmas.
But the question had to be asked, could this new quick-firing, turnover-based Tiger team do it against SEC opponents or was it just going to be fun wins against SIU-Edwardsville, Lindenwood and Mississippi Valley State, while being close against Southeast Missouri State and UCF?
Gates got his first chance at an SEC win as the Tigers invited No. 19 Kentucky to Mizzou Arena on Dec. 28.
And as he had against Illinois, Kobe Brown led the Tigers to a big win.
Brown produced his second consecutive 30-point performance while adding six rebounds, two assists and two steals. The Tigers produced 19 assists to just eight turnovers and though they were out-rebounded 37-28, they cruised to a 14-point win.
The Tigers jumped ahead early with a 10-2 run powered by a Tre Gomillion jumper, a Brown dunk, a Noah Carter 3 and a Brown layup to go ahead 17-7 with 14:36 left.
Missouri got to a double-digit lead for the first time with a couple of Sean East free throws with 8:57 left and never trailed after the 18:15 mark as they took a 42-30 lead into halftime.
The Tigers continued to dominate the second half, extending as far as a 21-point lead after a Deandre Gholston 3 with 4:07 left to play.
The Tigers were solid from 3, shooting 10-of-25 (40 percent) and just kept feeding Brown, who ended the day 10-of-18 from the field, 4-of-8 from 3 and 6-of-8 from the free-throw line. They dominated the fast-break points 17-6, and won the battle for bench points 33-13 as both Gholston and East had 12 points, to go with D’Moi Hodge’s 15.
Even Ben Sternberg and Jackson Francois got in the game right at the end, with Sternberg getting to the free-throw line and shooting 1-of-2.
As Gates continued his first fantastic season, the Tigers got to 12-1 and the new coach got conference play started on a high note.
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