From day one, Dennis Gates has gone out of his way to take the “me” out of his team. He will praise individual players when deserved, but rarely lift any individual over the rest. He has often identified players who played just a handful of minutes or pointed to contributions that many skip over as keys to a win.
After Tuesday night’s 83-74 win over South Carolina, Gates broke character. He said what most who watch this Missouri team know.
“As the season goes, his job’s gonna get a lot harder,” Gates said of Kobe Brown. “It’s going to continue to get difficult. And he has to understand how frustrating being that one person that’s the identity of our program (is).”
Everybody who has watched Missouri’s resurgent season knows that Kobe Brown is the face of the program. First, he’s the only one that’s been here for four years. But more than that, he’s the best player. He is Missouri’s star. Gates knows it. Brown knows it. Every opposing coach knows it. But Tuesday was the first time Gates has really said it out loud.
“(He) has teammates—that’s why he believes in them—but he has to understand his role in that,” Gates said. “He can never have a bad day.”
Those words came on the heels of what Gates thought was going to be a bad day for his star.
“I was not pleased with Kobe’s start and I challenged him,” the coach said. “Looked him in the eye several times and challenged him because I thought he was passing the ball too much and passed up on some open shots that he had normally taken.
“You don’t see that. You don’t know what my words were. But he and I shared words—some that my mom wouldn’t be proud of hearing. But he responded. He responded in the way that I thought a top 50 player in the country should respond, a potential conference player of the year should respond.”
This Missouri season is pointed squarely toward the NCAA Tournament. Tuesday night wasn’t always pretty. It wasn’t as easy as most wanted or expected it to be. But it was the Tigers’ 18th win, more than they’ve had in any season in five years. It pushed them a game over .500 in league play and within a game of fourth place in the Southeastern Conference. More important than all of that, it avoided what would have been a resume-staining Quad 4 loss to the league’s worst team.
But that season is only going to go as far as Kobe Brown’s play will take it.
This is a relatively deep Missouri team. There are 12 guys who have gotten meaningful minutes. There are seven averaging eight points or more per game, something that has never happened in school history. On any given night, D’Moi Hodge, Nick Honor, DeAndre Gholston, Sean East, Noah Carter or Isiaih Mosley is capable of leading the team in scoring.
But none of them are the face of the program. That’s Kobe Brown.
For all the bouquets that have been and will be thrown at Gates for the job he has done this season—and he deserves them all—the most important thing he did was convince Brown to stay in Columbia when the coach he came to play for got fired after his junior season. Brown spent the offseason in the weight room and behind the three-point line, looking to turn fat into muscle and his outside shot into a weapon.
He succeeded.
Brown had never shot better than 48% from the floor in his first three seasons. He is shooting 57.3% this year. A career 23.7% three-point shooter in his first three years, Brown is connecting on 45.7% this year and has already made 13 more threes than in any previous season. He is taking and making more free throws than he ever has before and is averaging a career-high in points, steals and assists while cutting down on his turnovers from a year ago.
Brown isn’t boisterous. Gates has frequently challenged him to be a bit more vocal with his teammates this year. While Gates was tearing him down before building him up for his play on Tuesday night, Brown sat quietly to his coach’s right, reacting little to the criticism or the praise. Asked about his six assists, Brown credited his teammates for making the shots. Asked about his rebounding and toughness, he remained understated and soft-spoken.
“I really just try to give as much effort as I can, just do what’s good for the team really,” Brown said. “I know that I’m not always the strongest guy on the floor, but I try to show that I am if that makes sense. I don’t want anyone to take advantage of me.”
Not many are. Alabama phenom Brandon Miller is likely to be the SEC player of the year, averaging 18.8 points and 8.2 rebounds on a team that hasn’t lost a conference game. But Brown’s got as strong an argument as anybody else in the league and is a near lock for first-team all-conference honors in another three-and-a-half weeks.
But Brown and his teammates will ultimately be judged on the games that come after that. The Tigers should be favored to win their first game in the conference tournament. They should then make their return to the NCAA Tournament the following week. Brown has played in just one tournament game in his career. He scored eight points and had six rebounds in a 72-68 loss to Oklahoma in the 2021 tourney. Missouri will need more than that this March. He has some help, but everybody knows: these Tigers will go only as far as Kobe Brown can lead them.
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