The Drake Bulldogs are the slowest-moving team in college basketball and the Missouri Tigers like to play fast.
The No. 6-seeded Tigers aren’t planning to slow down.
“The pace they try to play with, obviously dragging their offense out and try to shoot it at the end of the shot clock,” Missouri guard Tamar Bates said. “I mean, we’re not going to try to do anything outside of what we’ve done all year. Speed teams up, we’ll be solid defensively and take away what we can. … For us, it’s just about doing what we do.”
Drake is No. 364 out of 364 at 61.9 possessions per game and has had just 58.3 possessions per contest in its past three games, while Missouri is No. 106 at 71.7.
Ten possessions per game might not seem like a lot, but it’s led to the Bulldogs having the best scoring defense in the country (58.4 points allowed per game) even though Drake allows opponents to shoot more than 44 percent from the field.
So are the Tigers going to do anything specific to try to speed Drake up?
“I don’t think anything primarily goes into it,” Missouri coach Dennis Gates said. “I think both teams and both programs will continue to do what they’ve done throughout the course of the season and we’ll continue to do that as well. I think at the end of the day, if their ball isn’t going in and ours is going in, it can feel like things are being sped up a little bit and that’s kind of what we want to continue to do.”
The Tigers are not among the fastest teams in college basketball, but they do like to get out and run, play in transition and move the ball quickly.
And a big part of why they are able to consistently do that is the use of Missouri’s depth. The Tigers have nine players averaging at least 13 minutes player per game and another four averaging more than 5 minutes per game, with one more at almost 4.5. But they don’t have a single one averaging 30 minutes per game, as junior forward Mark Mitchell leads the way at about 27.4.
Drake on the other hand has three players averaging at least 33.5 minutes per game and five more averaging 10 or more. While the Tigers have 14 players who have appeared in more than half of their games, Drake has just nine.
“We’re going to make sure we’re consistent,” Gates said. “I think it is documented how deep our team is, but still, there’s only 200 minutes in a game and that’s consistent across the board, whether it’s five players that play the number of 200 or if it’s 10 players that play that. I think ultimately, those that are in game have to be engaged a certain way and I’ve got to make sure that our team, our program, is engaged, especially when it comes down to playing an opponent out of conference that has won 30 games.”
But whether fans see Gates use every player on his bench or squeeze his rotation as small as he has at any point this year, the Tigers are going to focus on staying themselves.
“We’ll just do what we do,” Missouri guard Caleb Grill said. “That’s what we’re going to do. We've been playing fast all year. We turn people over, that’s what we’re going to do tomorrow. And we have to be able to stay solid on the defensive end throughout deep shot clock situations and finish them up with rebounding.”
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