The Missouri scouting report likely didn’t note that Evan Gilyard II was a solid impressionist.
It also probably pointed toward a Missouri win, a routine performance soon to be forgotten.
But Gilyard shrugged off contact and yanked his imaginary backpack over his shoulders multiple times during his Academy Award-worthy impersonation of Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young, and his Kansas City team stormed into Columbia and handed the Tigers an 80-66 home loss Monday night.
The 5-foot-10 Gilyard shredded the Tigers for 28 points (making 10 of 15 field goals, including six of eight from 3-point range) and had the leading hand in opening up a Pandora's box worth of defensive questions for the Tigers, who are just days away from their first potential Power Five matchup.
“Allowing number 1 to get to the rim, allowing him to make plays,” coach Cuonzo Martin said when asked what went wrong on the defensive end. “You’ve got to take it away from him. He had 28 points, and he made some tough threes, made some big threes, but you’ve got to be aggressive, you’ve got to get in his legs. You’ve got to make him work for it.
“But when he’s 90 percent operating with his left hand, something we talked about, I mean — and like I tell our guys, I don’t have enough timeouts on the sideline to stop it. But you can’t allow a guy to play with comfort. He played with comfort the whole night.”
Gilyard made light work of Missouri’s defense all game, displaying a shifty handle before either knocking down a big three-pointer or finding himself at the rim, where contact seemingly bounced off of him. He isn’t an outlier, either. The Tigers allowed Central Michigan guard Jermaine Jackson Jr., who stands at 6-foot, to erupt for an efficient 19-point outing in their season opener.
“I think it’s pride,” Martin said of the trend. “I just think it’s personal pride. And those are the things we talk about in practice: individual pride in guarding the ball. One-on-one defense, you have to take pride in it. Because they didn’t operate in a lot of ball screens. Just kind of downhill, ghost ball screens where you fake the ball screen and turn the corner. And I just think it’s simply pride. And we’ll get there.”
Whatever the cause, the Roos flat out shot the basketball better than the Tigers did. Kansas City guard Anderson Kopp laid the foundation with his first make from deep just less than three minutes into the game. He drilled his next attempt roughly a minute later to put the Roos up 10-6. Missouri would never taste the lead again.
Kansas City lit Missouri up from beyond the arc, shooting 11 of 23 from deep. The Tigers tallied 21 personal fouls, with senior guard Javon Pickett picking up five of those — plus a technical foul — en route to his disqualification with 3:40 left to go in Monday’s game.
“We just got to turn it up,” Pickett said of the team’s perimeter defense. “We talk about this stuff all the time in practice. We just got to go out there and actually do it. Allowing guys to get comfortable. They're knocking down deep shots. So, we got to start getting a hand up. Today we said don't let (Gilyard) go left, went left every time, got to the rack whenever he wanted to. It was the game changer.”
Kansas City guard Marvin Nesbitt Jr. joined in on the fun, chipping in 20 points to combine with Gilyard for a whopping 48 points from the Roos’ starting backcourt. Not much could be said about Missouri’s backcourt defense, even with Kansas State transfer DaJuan Gordon, who Martin has regarded as the team’s best perimeter defender, making his Tiger debut.
The lack of tenacity carried over to the boards, where Kansas City — a team that ranked 349th in Division I in offensive rebounding % entering the game, while Mizzou ranked 14th in the nation (albeit after just one contest) — matched Missouri’s six offensive rebounds and ultimately out-rebounded it by two overall. Like the perimeter defense, Martin chalked up the struggles on the glass to a lack of grit.
“We're a really good offensive rebounding team,” Martin said. “We got six offensive rebounds. So that means we weren't very aggressive or assertive.”
The Tigers gave up 80 points just six times a season ago. In the same campaign, they never allowed a mid-major team to score more than 64. Kansas City’s 80 points are the most a Martin-coached team has allowed against a mid-major opponent since his first season, when Stephen F. Austin scored 81 in December of 2017.
With the possibility of a game against Florida State in next weekend’s Jacksonville Classic — which ranks No. 38 nationally in offensive efficiency, per KenPom — the Tigers don’t have much time to figure out their defensive woes. Until then, Missouri will likely spend countless hours trying to correct what went wrong in one of the two worst losses since he took over in Columbia.
“I feel like, I hope our guys don't just brush this under the rug,” junior Kobe Brown said. “Hopefully you learn from this. I don't want them to just let it clear their mind. I hope they think about it for tonight, tomorrow. And then we move on to the next game. But I don't want them to forget this.”
Talk about this story and more in The Tigers' Lair
Make sure you're caught up on all the Tiger news and headlines
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video and live streaming coverage
