The margin between a win and a loss is razor thin. And when you need wins as much as Mizzou does right now, being on the wrong side of the blade hurts even more. The Tigers lost won they probably should have won on Saturday, falling 67-64 to Texas A&M in a game in which the Aggies missed their first 13 shots and did not score for the first eight minutes and 53 seconds of the game.
“You got to do the things that you need to do from start to finish of games to be successful,” head coach Cuonzo Martin said. “Just the consistency. That’s what we have to get better at.”
It seems a little foolish to make too much of a game that very few outside of Columbia or College Station knew was happening. This season has been headed in the wrong direction for a couple of months now. There wasn’t much particularly memorable about this one and it isn’t likely one many will point to whenever this year eventually comes to an end.
But it might matter a lot for Martin. The simple fact is, the next two months are really about only one thing: Does Missouri win enough games that Martin gets the chance to coach the Tigers for a sixth season in 2022-23? When that’s the only question facing the program with half of the season still to go, every win matters.
“As hard as it is to win games, we have to find ways not to beat ourselves,” Martin said.
“We had the game in our hands I feel like,” Boogie Coleman said. “We’re not happy at all from this game. We definitely should have won it.”
The come-from-ahead loss (Missouri led for 35 minutes and 17 seconds, A&M for just 2:55) was Mizzou’s ninth in 16 games so far this season. The good news is that the Tigers made it to the final seconds before the result was obvious, but the bad news is it still turned out like most of the rest of the games against legitimate competition. Missouri’s players were asked to differentiate the frustration between losing a game like Saturday’s and one like Wednesday against Arkansas that was over before any of them had broken a sweat. Ultimately, it doesn’t much matter.
“Both were disappointing,” Coleman said. “A blowout you’re embarrassed because you got blown out, but a close one you had right there for the win. Both of them hurt either way.”
It seems early to litigate the case for or against Martin. That will be done in due time and due time is not in the halfway point of the season. He’s going to coach at least 16 more games, assuming Mizzou’s postponement against Mississippi State eventually happens. Then the pros and cons will be lined up and we’ll see where it goes.
But the fact that it looks like it’s going to be a conversation and the fact that the answer could go still either way makes games like Saturday’s a little more damaging. For their parts, the Missouri players who were made available to the media took full blame for the loss.
“What we were doing in the first half, it was like everything just went out the window,” Javon Pickett said. “That’s on us as the players.”
Pickett mentioned two or three times that the coaches did everything that could be asked of them and the players simply failed to execute the plan. Ultimately, of course, that’s what almost always costs a coach his job. The players are the ones on whom the coach’s job security rides, but in college, the players themselves can’t be fired. Regardless of whose fault it is, the coach is the one that ultimately pays the price.
“We got to go out and continue to play the game the coaches want us to,” Pickett said. “That’s on us. We’ve got to be better.”
Whether that bill will come due for Martin in two months remains undetermined—at least in the minds of those who will actually make the decision. If it does, days like Saturday will be remembered as ones that could have changed it.
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