With about three and a half minutes remaining in Missouri’s matchup against Vanderbilt, point guard Jordan Geist held the ball as the shot clock ticked toward zero. Geist, swarmed by a Commodore defender, looked like he would have to attempt a contested, flailing heave before the buzzer. But with about two seconds left on the shot clock, he spotted an open teammate: freshman Torrence Watson. Watson caught the pass as he stepped toward the basket and let fly a 25-footer. As the buzzer sounded, the ball swished through the net.
Watson finished the game with 12 points, tied for a career high. The buzzer-beating three-pointer provided the most timely of those points, as Vanderbilt had cut the Tiger lead to five and the 11,091 fans in attendance were starting to get a bit restless, the memory of last Saturday’s blown 14-point lead fresh in their minds. Missouri’s players admitted they had flashbacks to the LSU loss as well. But starting with Watson’s three, Missouri scored on its final seven possessions to shut the door on any possibility of a Vanderbilt comeback.
Against Vanderbilt, Missouri corrected several flaws that had contributed to its three-game losing streak entering Saturday. The Tigers committed just nine turnovers, one off their season-low, and grabbed 11 offensive rebounds compared to two for the Commodores. But most importantly, any time Vanderbilt looked to be making a run, Missouri answered.
“Honestly, at the end of the game, I got scared, because I was like, we have to finish this game,” sophomore center Jeremiah Tilmon said. “This happened last time. We played LSU, we was all up, everybody was all happy.”
Missouri led for all but 1:20 of the game, but Vanderbilt made it interesting in the second half, largely by getting hot from behind the three-point line. After starting the game one of 16 from three, Vanderbilt finished the game by making six of its last eight from behind the arc. With eight and a half minutes to play, Missouri’s lead was down to three points, and with 3:30 left, it was just five. During the second half, Geist said he wasn’t shy about reminding his teammates of the LSU loss.
“You gotta remind them,” he said. “With a young group, just keep it in their mind. You just gotta tell them to just keep going no matter what.”
Geist, Missouri’s leading scorer on the season, actually struggled in the first half, but the Tigers jumped out to its early lead thanks largely to their freshmen. Javon Pickett scored the game’s first six points and finished with 12. Watson scored seven points in the first half and Xavier Pinson scored five. Watson, especially, looked more confident than usual Saturday. Never was that more apparent than on his three-pointer at the end of the shot clock.
“I knew it was going in before it touched my hands,” Watson said of the shot.
Seeing more minutes in place of injured guard Mark Smith, Watson has played his best basketball of the season this week. Wednesday against Auburn, he scored 10 points, all in the first half. Watson attributed his improved play to working on his game outside of practice time.
“I had to realize how much work you had to put in in order to be good at this stage, so I’ve been coming in every day before practice, in practice and working out after practice, just making sure that I’m getting better every day,” Watson.
In the second half, Geist and Tilmon took over. Geist scored 14 of his 15 points in the last 15 minutes of the game, including a three-pointer and a floater on back-to-back possessions in the final three minutes of the game. Tilmon finished with a team-high 19 points and eight rebounds. Plus, he only had one turnover, which came when he launched a full-court shot at what he thought would be the buzzer ending the first half, when there were actually still a few seconds on the clock. Head coach Cuonzo Martin called the game Tilmon’s “best effort since he’s been in the program at playing against the double.”
“When they blitzed him, he found the right guys, made the right plays,” Martin said.
Perhaps most importantly, Tilmon tied his career high Saturday by playing 35 minutes. After fouling out of three games in a row, Tilmon has now played at least 26 minutes in six straight contests. He called the stretch the best of his college career.
“If I’m fouling, I’m on the bench and that don’t help the team at all,” Tilmon said. “So when I’m on the court and I’m not fouling, even when I’m not scoring, I feel like I’m still being productive and effective on defense, so I feel like it’s still helping the team out.”
Vanderbilt is not the same caliber opponent as the likes of LSU and Auburn. The Commodores, winless in SEC play, come in at No. 133 in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings. But Martin seemed pleased that his team exhibited improvement in some of the areas in which it has struggled this season: keeping Tilmon on the floor, taking care of the ball, and most importantly, responding to opponents’ runs.
“I think it’s growth,” Martin said.
TURNING POINT: It looked like Missouri was lapsing into a characteristic late-first-half malaise when Vanderbilt scored eight unanswered points in just over two minutes to cut Missouri’s lead from 10 points to two. Instead of surrendering the lead, however, Missouri answered with an 8-0 lead of its own. Tilmon threw down a two-handed slam, Geist made one of two free throws, Watson drove and scored at the rim, and Ronnie Suggs capped the run with a coast-to-coast drive, layup and free throw.
IT WAS OVER WHEN: Following Watson’s three-pointer late in the shot clock, Missouri and Vanderbilt basically traded baskets for the last 3:30 of the game. But Vanderbilt could never cut its deficit to fewer than six points. A 10-foot jumper from Tilmon to extend Missouri’s lead to eight with 50 seconds left essentially sealed the victory.
CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM: Vanderbilt is not exactly built to turn opponents over. But as Martin said after the game, “we turn it over when teams aren’t pressuring us.” The fact that Missouri made it about 14 minutes into the game without a turnover and never reached double-digit turnovers is clear progress.
CAUSE FOR CONCERN: Missouri wasn’t spectacular defensively, especially in the second half. Vanderbilt shot 52.2 percent from the field in the final 20 minutes and at one point made six three-pointers in a row. Part of that is just hot shooting, but this isn’t the first time Missouri has struggled to get a stop late in a game during conference play. It ultimately didn’t matter, since the Tigers were able to get into the paint and score virtually at will against the Commodores, but Missouri likely won’t be able to to outscore tougher opponents without tightening up on the defensive end.
STOCK UP: Mitchell Smith. In his season-long quest to find consistent production from the power forward spot, Martin turned to Smith for 20 minutes Saturday, his most since conference play began. Smith showed impressive flashes, at one point throwing a beautiful, full-court outlet pass that resulted in a Geist layup and later ending an 11-0 Vanderbilt run with a three-pointer. Expect him to get more playing time moving forward as a result.
STOCK DOWN: K.J. Santos. Smith’s uptick in playing time came because Santos has been ineffective. After getting the start at power forward against Auburn on Wednesday, Santos has seen his minutes plummet. Saturday, he played just six minutes and only recorded one stat: a missed shot. At arguably the weakest position in Missouri’s lineup, Santos is pretty clearly the third option.
UP NEXT: Missouri (11-9, KenPom No. 92) will travel to No. 1 Tennessee (20-1, KenPom No. 5) on Tuesday. Tipoff is set for 8 p.m.
