At halftime of his team’s game against No. 4 Kentucky Tuesday night, Cuonzo Martin offered a blunt message to his players. Martin told the team that it looked timid in the first half, not ready for the challenge of facing an opponent that had just toppled then-No. 1 Tennessee on Saturday. In the second half, he wanted to see more fight.
“He even said, ‘It’s the first time that I can remember saying that we didn’t come out hard,’” guard Ronnie Suggs said. “He said if we play with effort, then that’s all I can ask for. But we didn’t come out hard at all.”
Martin got more effort out of his players in the final 20 minutes, but it wasn’t enough to overcome an 18-point halftime deficit caused by that tentative start and early foul trouble for Jeremiah Tilmon. The Tigers outscored Kentucky by 10 points in the second half but ultimately fell to Kentucky 66-58.
After the game, the normally mild Martin showed a bit of an edge as he discussed his team’s lack of fight. He said he “looked in some guys’ eyes” and saw that they hadn’t embraced the challenge of hosting a top-five team.
“We didn’t fight at all in the first half,” Martin said. “We didn’t play hard. I thought we played on our heels in the first half.”
Compounding matters was early foul trouble for Tilmon. Tilmon picked up two fouls in the first five minutes of the game, both on the offensive end. Martin opted to play Tilmon for a few minutes with two fouls in the first half of Saturday’s loss at Ole Miss, but Tuesday, he kept Tilmon on the bench until after the break. Kentucky’s talented frontcourt took advantage. Wildcat forward P.J. Washington scored 15 of his 18 points in the first half, and on the defensive end, Martin said Kentucky denied open looks to Missouri’s guards to “force our fours and fives to beat them.” Kentucky outscored Missouri 31-12 in the final 12:21 of the half.
Tilmon said he wanted to re-enter the game before the end of the first half, saying he still felt “locked in” after picking up his second foul. But Martin felt it best to try to weather the storm with replacements rather than put Tilmon in position to pick up his third foul before the break. Even when Mitchell Smith left the game after being elbowed in the back of the head, Martin kept Tilmon on the sidelines.
“I just felt like, in this particular game, because of their interior strength, we had to go ahead and ride it the rest of the half, and just try to keep them at bay until we get into the second half,” Martin explained. “He gets three fouls with those interior guys that they have, it would be tough in the second half.”
Tilmon played all but 31 seconds in the second half, and his presence showed. Missouri out-rebounded Kentucky 19 to eight and outscored the Wildcats 18-12 in the paint after the break. The Tigers limited Kentucky to 25 points in the second half. But Martin said after the game he felt an increase in effort had more to do with the team’s late rally than Tilmon’s presence.
Martin went with a small lineup down the stretch, playing freshman Javon Pickett at the four spot and asking Suggs and Torrence Watson to help guard Kentucky’s post players. Asked about the decision to feature those players instead of forwards Kevin Puryear and K.J. Santos, Martin said he was looking for players that would battle. He said Pickett, Suggs and Watson “changed the game for us.”
“It’s just simply fighting,” he said. “The thing I’ve talked to our guys, you have to fight without playing dirty. … You have to play as hard as you can play, and I thought our guys did that, gave ourselves a chance to win, put pressure on those guys.”
Martin gave perhaps his most revealing answer when asked whether the second-half surge was proof that his team is still buying in to the coaching staff’s message rather than letting losses impact its effort.
“If you’re not buying in, you have to relocate,” Martin said. “I don’t understand that. I really don’t. This is what you’re supposed to do. Give everything you got. You’re on scholarship. Somebody’s paying for your schooling. It’s the least you can do is play hard.”
Martin’s message appeared to sink in, at least for the players who saw the floor after halftime Tuesday. Even though he wanted to win, Tilmon took some optimism away from the team’s second-half performance. After the game, he said, he challenged his teammates to remember Martin’s words and put forth the effort he commands for a full game the next time they take the floor.
“If we can just play how we played that second half a whole 40 minutes, it’s going to be scary for a lot of teams,” Tilmon said. “When we’re locked and loaded and playing like we’re down 40, we play hard, we go hard, we get the lead back up. But we built a hole so big that it was too late. So we gotta start out the gate.”
TURNING POINT: Missouri hung around early, even taking an 11-10 lead when Mitchell Smith hit a floater in the lane with 12:40 left in the first half. But then Kentucky took control with a 9-0 run in just under 90 seconds and never relinquished the lead. Washington gave the Wildcats the lead with an alley-oop dunk, then Tyler Herro scored seven straight points. Kentucky outscored Missouri 31-12 to end the half.
IT WAS OVER WHEN: Missouri fought valiantly to keep the game close into the final minutes, cutting the Kentucky lead to seven points with just over a minute left and six points with 14 seconds left. But Herro iced the game by making two free throws to extend the Wildcat lead to eight points with 12 seconds remaining.
CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM: With this game out of the way, Missouri can at least take some comfort in knowing its schedule won’t get any more difficult for the rest of the season. Sheer effort wasn’t enough to overcome the talent gap against Kentucky, a bona fide national title contender. Remaining games against Florida, South Carolina, Georgia and Ole Miss should be much more winnable.
CAUSE FOR CONCERN: Mark Smith is clearly not fully recovered from the ankle injury that sidelined him for six games. Smith went scoreless Tuesday, missing all seven of his shots. Through the first 17 games of the season, Smith was averaging 12.6 points per game and leading the SEC with a 47.5 percent three-point shooting rate. In the past two games, he’s scored a combined three points and shot one-of-eight from behind the arc. After the game, Martin said the injury is impacting Smith's shooting form. One wonders if it would be best to just shelf Smith for the rest of this season so he can enter the offseason healthy.
STOCK UP: Ronnie Suggs. The last player to ever wear No. 3 for Missouri due to Derrick Chievous’ jersey retirement Tuesday, Suggs played the best offensive game of his Missouri career. He led the team with 13 points and grabbed four rebounds in 24 minutes.
STOCK DOWN: K.J. Santos. In a game in which Missouri was shorthanded in the post due to foul trouble and Mitchell Smith’s exit, Santos still wasn’t much of a factor. The only stat he recorded in 11 minutes of play was a single rebound. Perhaps most telling, Missouri was outscored by 15 points while he was on the floor.
UP NEXT: Missouri (12-13, KenPom No. 95) will travel to Florida (14-11, KenPom No. 30) on Saturday. Tipoff is set for 3 p.m.
