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Mizzou run over by Auburn on the road, 89-56

Auburn treated Tuesday’s game against Missouri like a must-win. Mizzou treated it like it had already taken care of business on the road and was ready to go home.

AU’s tournament chances had been declining over the past three weeks, with the Tigers losing five of their last six games. A loss to MU at home would’ve had the team fighting to get back into the NCAA selection committee’s good graces with a road game against No. 1 Alabama and a home game against No. 10 Tennessee still on the schedule.

Missouri’s tournament odds have steadily increased as the season has worn on. The team picked up its most impressive win of the year by beating the Volunteers on the road at the buzzer on Saturday. But nothing that made Mizzou successful at Tennessee seemed to carry over into the Auburn game. MU had just seven turnovers against the Volunteers. They had 11 by the end of the first half against AU. Missouri shot 14-26 from beyond the arc against Tennessee. The team went 5-22 against Auburn.

The result was a walloping bounce-back victory for Auburn and a deflating loss for Mizzou inside Neville Arena, 89-56.

“Well, definitely not satisfied with the outcome,” head coach Dennis Gates said. “I thought Auburn did a great job of executing the game plan that they set out to execute and that led to their victory. We came out a little flat, wasn't able to manufacture points the way that we have normally and I thought that put us behind in that first half.”

Missouri didn’t look anything like the team that knocked off the Volunteers. The only similarity between the team that showed up on Saturday and the one that stepped on the floor Tuesday was that they wore the same black uniforms.

The visitors missed on all five of their opening field goal attempts of the game, allowing Auburn (18-8, 8-5 SEC) to get off to a 5-0 lead. Senior guard DeAndre Gholston snuck a bounce pass to fellow senior guard D’Moi Hodge making a backdoor cut along the right baseline with the team’s next possession and Hodge laid the ball in to get Mizzou on the board. The hosts responded with a 14-0 run to extend the lead to 17 points.

Auburn got up by as much as 24 with nine minutes left in the first. Mizzou got more aggressive getting into the paint, trimming the deficit to 17 with 3:40 remaining and giving the team a chance to make the deficit a little more manageable. But the hosts closed out on a 12-2 run, going up 45-18 and slamming the door shut on any hope of a rally.

“I mean, you gotta give credit to them, but it was on us tonight, really,” said senior point guard Sean East II, who led the team with 14 points. “We was kind of slow a little bit but we're gonna learn from it. And it was nothing we haven't seen. This league is tough and we've just got to learn from it and move on to the next one.”

Gates told his players to keep a short-term memory at halftime and not to look up at the scoreboard in the second. He wanted his team to reset — to start the game over at 0-0.

MU saw marginal improvements. Auburn's field goal percentage went from 50.0% in the first half to 46.9% in the second. Mizzou lost the turnover margin in the first, coughing the ball up 11 times to AU’s seven, but won it in the second, committing five turnovers to Auburn’s eight. The visitors scored 15 points off of the takeaways, giving the offense a much-needed boost.

The hosts were still the better team, though, outscoring Missouri 44-38 in the second half and sealing the 89-56 blowout victory.

Gates was still pleased his team came away splitting a tough two-game road trip. More times than not, Mizzou has responded well after a loss. The head coach expects the same after Tuesday’s rout.

“We're preparing for the next game back home,” freshman forward Aidan Shaw said. “So, we're ready to play in front of the home crowd.”

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Brown held in check

During Missouri’s win over South Carolina last week, Gates said he had to get after senior forward Kobe Brown at halftime. Mizzou’s leading scorer had been held to five points through the first half against the Gamecocks — Gates needed more from him. Brown answered the call, erupting for 14 points in the second half, leading the Tigers to an 83-74 win at home.

Brown got off to a similarly sluggish start against Auburn on Tuesday, posting two points on 1-4 shooting. However, there wasn’t as strong of a follow-up this time, as he picked up just five more points. He still contributed in several other areas, racking up five rebounds, five assists, a block and a steal. But it was the lowest number he’d scored since the team’s matchup against Kansas on Dec. 10.

Gates said he gave Brown a talking-to again at halftime on Tuesday. But he had to do the same with everyone else on the roster. No one had a good shooting night.

“Our team isn't one person,” Gates said. “And we have to continue to do the things that we need to do to make sure that we put ourselves in a great situation. So tonight, it was about talking to everyone to be able to manufacture the things that we manufactured. And I thought in the second half, we bounced back.”

Up next

Missouri (19-7, 7-6 SEC) returns to Mizzou Arena for a pair of games, hosting Texas A&M (18-7, 10-2) on Saturday at 5 p.m. and Mississippi State (17-8, 5-7) next Tuesday at 6 p.m.

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