Kobe Brown remembers the people camped outside of Allen Fieldhouse last year. He remembers the lines wrapped around the building. He remembers the students that cussed out the Tigers when they first arrived in Lawrence, Kan.
It was the senior forward’s first real taste of the Border War, along with a new generation of players and fans who hadn’t seen Missouri play Kansas after their last game on Feb. 25, 2012. Brown and the Tigers lost to the Jayhawks, 102-65, on Dec. 11, 2021, but the bitterness was renewed.
This year’s contest will be played on Saturday in Columbia, Mo. For many, it’ll be their first time seeing the two rivals square off in person — including most of Mizzou’s staff and roster. As Brown found out last season, it’s tough to prepare for what to expect playing in a game with as much tension as Saturday’s will have.
“This is serious and it means a whole lot more to the community than it means to us, with us not growing up around here,” Brown said. “But we just gotta give it our all because we owe it to everyone here.”
Senior guard Isiaih Mosley is likely familiar with the rivalry, having grown up in Columbia. Graduate assistant coach Phil Pressey went up against the Jayhawks four times during his playing days with the Tigers. Kobe, sophomore guard Kaleb Brown and junior forward Ronnie DeGray III all got minutes in last year’s game against Kansas.
They’ve all tried filling in the rest of the team on what they’re about to step into.
“It all helps, experience helps,” head coach Dennis Gates said. “But we have guys that played in hostile environments. Although we have guys from the portal, if you look across the schedules of their games that they've played, they've played in environments that's really, really exciting and they were hostile.”
Still, there are factors they can’t account for in practice, the number of fans in the building being one of them. Missouri’s season opener against Southern Indiana on Nov. 7 had an announced crowd of 10,273, the highest attendance of any of the team’s games this season. Saturday's crowd could be 50% larger, already being deemed a sellout — Mizzou Arena has a capacity of 15,061.
It’s also a little more difficult for players to feel the same hatred toward Kansas as those in the community do after the near-decade-long gap and the realignment of Missouri from the Big 12 to the SEC.
“It's not the same at all,” said former Tigers guard Kim English. “You had the history, the rivalry and the hatred. But you also had conference implications, right? We're playing for championships, we're playing for seeding, legitimately. Our game, you know, we might be a one seed if we win that game in 2011 and '12. We probably are the Big 12 champions in '12. You know, but it's different for sure. It's not the same but it's always good to play. It's a great game.”
Though they haven’t played Kansas in front of their home crowd yet, the Tigers do have a sense of how important Saturday is. Kobe said someone replied “beat kU” to a post he made on a discussion board for one of his classes.
The team will realize exactly what the rivalry means to the school when the team tips off with Kansas at 4:15 p.m. on Saturday, the game airing on ESPN.
Now a head coach at George Mason, English said he hasn’t kept up with either team very much this season. But he’d give the Tigers the same advice he’d give to anyone going into a big matchup in early December.
“Just give it your all,” English said. “Just make sure you're giving your best effort.
“And beat 'em.”
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