I’m not going to write columns about every basketball game, just the ones I feel inspired to write something about. So don’t expect one Saturday or Sunday morning about the Tigers beating Howard.

I took a night to think about and evaluate my feelings from Monday’s season-opening loss to Memphis and here’s where I ended up.

The second half felt eerily similar. New team, tons of new faces, and yet the same issues.

Missouri’s offense fell apart as coach Dennis Gates made some, we’ll call them interesting, rotational choices. Rebounding was still an issue and the Tigers got dominated late leading to a double-digit loss.

That was just about every game from December on last season and Monday became the program's 20th-consecutive loss, keeping Missouri winless in the calendar year of 2024.

That streak will end Friday and the Tigers will be over .500 by Monday night, but that doesn’t solve much right now.

Though I still think there were a lot of positives to take away from the game.

Part of what happened game after game last year was a slow start on offense, then a charge back in about a 10-minute spurt late in the first half or early in the second half.

That didn’t happen. Missouri didn’t look great for the first minute, but the Tigers were flying around for most of the first half. Playing in transition, moving the ball, turning steals into points in a way that felt a lot more like 2022-23 than last year.

I think most of the first half went about as well as you could hope for.

“We ended up executing some things in that first half that I thought should have taken place in that second,” Gates said. “... It’s just the way the game goes.”

Aidan Shaw was impacting the game in a way we’ve only seen a time or two in his first couple of years.

Who would have guessed Trent Pierce would be leading the team with 10 points at halftime after clearly taking more than one step forward offensively?

Anthony Robinson might just be the starting point guard moving forward after taking advantage of his first opportunity to join the starting five. If he hadn’t had to leave the game for a bit with a cramp, his night could have been even better.

Both Pierce and Robinson set career highs in scoring.

But the second half did have some hallmarks of weird in-game decisions from Gates. Let’s start with his reasoning for not playing Shaw and Pierce in the first 10 minutes of the second half after they led the offense in the first half.

“Memphis wasn’t pressing in the first half as much as they were in the second,” Gates said. “That’s the difference. It was two different games in that first half and the second half.”

OK, yes, Memphis was pressing a lot more. He led into that quote talking about needing more ball handlers on the floor, which is why both Tony Perkins and Robinson were in together for significant amounts of time in the second half. But that didn’t help the turnovers which Missouri made 11 of after halftime to just four assists.

So I get the thought process, (and additionally I’m glad Gates actually gave a response like that. He hasn’t always given straightforward thought-process answers, so maybe this year will be a bit better in that department).

But along with the difference in play style, the rotation issue here was part of the issue with playing a game like this as the first game of the season without playing a high-level team in an exhibition.

You don’t know enough about your team to say “alright, let’s just let Pierce cook.” Marques Warrick, the leading active scorer in college basketball, and Jacob Crews, a transfer you’re hoping can bring more outside shooting to the team, hadn’t touched the floor yet. Mark Mitchell clearly hadn’t gotten rolling at all and needed time out there to try to get into a rhythm. You’re relying on Mitchell to be a key to the season and Warrick and Crews need to play their roles, but to figure out what those roles are, they have to play.

We’re having a very different conversation if Crews had come in, hit a couple of 3s and changed the momentum while Memphis was rolling or if Warrick took control of the offense and poured in a couple of buckets in key spots.

But they didn’t. There’s no way to have known what they would do in that spot until you see them, though.

So, yes, not having Pierce or Shaw in for the first 10 minutes of the second half after how well they played in the first was a weird choice. But I think that’s because of the overall situation of playing a game at this level this early in the season when your team is built on transfers.

The next thing I think stood out more was the loss of Josh Gray when he got his fourth foul. Payton Marshall got his first taste of college ball, but that was right when Memphis started to roll and even when Gray returned, he clearly couldn’t play aggressively.

“Josh Gray is an excellent, experienced player at this level,” Gates said. “So that’s leadership, that’s experience down in the paint. I thought once we had to go small, I didn’t really want to put Aidan Shaw and Mark Mitchell in the paint as much as I did, but that allowed more paint touches and less aggression, him having those four fouls. In hindsight, just go foul out and play more aggressive and we’ll deal with the rest. But he wasn’t able to play aggressive and I thought that is what, in that second half, set us back.”

Sounds like there was actually a lesson learned there.

Not sure how much better letting Gray foul out with 15 minutes left would have been, but that’s at least acknowledgement of a mistake and understanding that a change in strategy needs to happen in that situation going forward. Gray played solid defense in the first half and when he was off the floor, you could feel the momentum shift as Memphis started to have more space to score in the paint. Which, combined with free throws, was every point in the comeback before Memphis took the lead on a 3.

“We didn’t do a great job of, you know, paint protection, like we were in the first half,” Gates said. The second half, they were able to, you know, execute because they got the ball to the paint.”

And those extra buckets in the paint allowed Memphis to press more, force more turnovers and take more high-percentage shots in the half court offense. It all spiraled in on itself.

Though this game definitely felt similar to almost every game I watched this team play last year, I didn’t come out of it with the same feeling of “Missouri stands no chance” like I did for much of the second half of last season.

I came away with a lot of positives that just fell apart because of a couple of bad choices that can be remedied.

But the team looks very athletic, much stronger offensively when it’s in rhythm and able to come out quickly in a way that last year’s team rarely did.

The Tigers were in a tough situation going on the road against a good program when you have to get a look at a lot of new players and how they respond to in-game situations. And that led to a spiral of bad outcomes.

But I found a lot of good in Monday’s game and I think a handful of opportunities against nothing teams will allow Missouri the chance it needs to fully figure out its main rotations.

Mitchell and Perkins are going to play better than they did Monday. Hopefully Pierce and Shaw will prove the first half wasn’t a fluke. The Tigers have the chance to get their rotations figured out and get the offense rolling against bad teams.

This team is better this year even though Monday felt very similar to a whole lot of last year’s games.

Head on over to the Tiger Walk to discuss this and so much more.