It’s been a year to forget for the Missouri Tigers women’s basketball team.
The team dropped non-conference games to Vermont and Oral Roberts, lost the first six games of the conference season without really looking competitive in most of them and seemed content to run out the clock on coach Robin Pingeton’s final year under contract.
But sophomore guard Grace Slaughter decided that wasn’t going to happen.
For the third time this year, Slaughter matched or beat her previous career high on offense. Her best game as a freshman was a 21-point performance at Saint Louis.
This year she put up 22 against Tulane and Jackson State, then shined while leading the Tigers to their first conference win in more than a year.
Slaughter scored 31 points and grabbed six rebounds, shot 8-of-8 at the free-throw line and dribbled her way into a left-handed baseline floater at the buzzer to give the Tigers a one-point win against Mississippi State, ending what had turned into an 18-game SEC losing streak.
Slaughter came into the season wanting to work on physicality and her mid-range game.
She said the physicality of SEC play caught her by surprise when she was thrown into the fire immediately.
“During my freshman year, I felt like I was always hearing the term, like, ‘Just survive,’” Slaughter said before the season. “Just get through it. But I learned so much my freshman year.”
“Adjusting to the physicality, being able to take it and being able to give it as well,” Slaughter added about her focus during the offseason.
Slaughter came to the Tigers as the top-ranked player in Missouri out of Grain Valley, winning the 2023 Gatorade Player of the Year and being named a McDonald's All-American.
And she stepped in well as the second on third option on a team that had Hayley Frank and Mama Dembele to absorb focus in front of her.
The 6-foot-2 guard posted a double-double in her first career game then scored in double figures in seven of her first nine games.
She posted double figures in 14-of-17 conference games as well. But with Frank and Dembele gone, other teams began to spend their focus on the sophomore this season.
"I think I've felt that some," Slaughter said on Tiger Talk last week. "But I think that comes with being part of the SEC, it's such a powerful conference and everyone is so physical and so fast."
And that focus came to bear early in the conference season this year.
After using her superior athletic ability and basketball IQ to build a 14.7 average in points per game in non-conference play, Slaughter shot just just 5-of-14 from the field against South Carolina, while posting four turnovers.
Then she posted just eight points on 2-of-7 shooting against Alabama and only five points on 1-of-5 shooting against Georgia.
Her low score in a game as a freshman was six points, but this season, she has two games of five points and a career-low four against Oral Roberts as defenses sent their best players straight at her knowing shutting her down was the best way to shut down the Tigers.
"She went from maybe third or fourth on a lot of people's scouts to really, probably at the top of the scout based on how she was playing in the non-con," Pingeton said on Tiger Talk. "You get a lot of attention, it becomes really hard to get shots and again in this league, it's so physical and so athletic. Our challenge to her was to continue to be more aggressive and more assertive, trying to hunt down those shot opportunities."
And with that focus on aggression, Slaughter has gotten back on a roll with 17 points against Florida, 15 against Oklahoma, 14 and four rebounds against Auburn and then the best performance yet with 31 point, six rebounds and just one turnover to lead the win against Mississippi State.
“Being aggressive can help and not every night is going to be your night offensively, so the night you do have a couple drop to you … you just need to be able to move the ball quickly,” Slaughter said. “My teammates did a great job of finding me tonight in those situations.”
This has been a season that will likely be forgotten in the long history of Mizzou women’s basketball, but it will be one to remember for Slaughter as she continues her rise to the expectations that were built in for her during her recruitment to her home school.
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