It’s been a calendar year, so it’s difficult to remember and I don’t fault anyone for forgetting. But Missouri was worse through its first couple of games last season than the 2023-24 team has been in these past few weeks.
It’s easy to recall what the Tigers looked like in March: Kobe Brown was a certified star. D’Moi Hodge was a sniper from deep and one of the peskiest defenders in school history. DeAndre Gholston provided a sturdy third option if Brown and/or Hodge couldn’t get going. It was a team that scored 79 points against the No. 1 defense in the country in Tennessee during the SEC tournament. It was a team that beat Utah State — a program that was favored by 1.5 points by oddsmakers and ranked higher in the NET, KenPom and Bart Torvik — by 11 in the first round of the Big Dance.
It was a unit that was also a finished product. Mizzou wasn’t playing anywhere near that level when it set off in November. The black and gold nearly gave up a 20-point lead in the final 4:47 of its 97-91 win over Southern Indiana. The Tigers were tied with Penn at halftime in their second game, 43-43, before pulling away just enough in the second period for a 92-85 victory. It wasn’t until the team’s third game against Lindenwood that it won by double digits, 82-53.
No one had truly settled into their roles by that point, either. Brown scored 20 points against USI, then eight against Penn, then 13 against Lindenwood. Hodge had one steal in the opener, three in the next game, then none against the Lions — he shot 6-21 from the 3-point line over the stretch. Gholston saw his minutes go from 22 to 15 to 18 and later lost his starting spot.We know how it turned out for all three of them. But at the time, no one was predicting Brown to be a future first-round NBA Draft pick, or Hodge to break the single-season steals record and hit 100 treys, or Gholston to bail the black and gold out as many times as he did. It took time for head coach Dennis Gates to find the right lineup combinations and clearly define what each player’s role was going to be.
It’s unfair to have less patience with this year’s squad
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