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Notebook: Mizzou hoping for more games like Saturday's from Dru Smith

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Even though his game is rarely flashy, Dru Smith entered his senior season with significant expectations. Smith, playing his second year at Missouri after transferring from Evansville, was picked by SEC coaches to the preseason all-league second team.

Early in the year, he showed why. During Missouri’s first five games of the season, Smith averaged 14.6 points per game. After scoring 14 points against Liberty and 18 in Missouri’s win over rival Illinois, Smith earned SEC player of the week honors. But during the following four games, Smith began to struggle. He averaged just 7.3 points per game during a stretch in which Missouri went 2-2, with one of those wins coming by just one point over Bradley. Smith recorded six assists and 13 turnovers during that span.

Saturday, in Missouri’s bounce-back win over Texas A&M, Smith got back to looking like the potential all-SEC player. Smith stuffed the stat sheet as usual, scoring a team-high 15 points to go along with six rebounds, six assists and four steals. Head coach Cuonzo Martin said after the game that Missouri is a “different team” when Smith plays like that.

“He can get steals and do other things, he shuts down perimeter guys,” Martin said of Smith. “His game is on both sides of the ball, so it’s not necessarily you look and you say, he only took eight shots or he got this and that. ... When he’s on the floor, then you see the results, because now he’s on both sides of the ball.”

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Missouri guard Dru Smith scored 15 points to go along with six rebounds, six assists and four steals during Missouri's win over Texas A&M.
Missouri guard Dru Smith scored 15 points to go along with six rebounds, six assists and four steals during Missouri's win over Texas A&M. (Jessi Dodge)

A couple factors helped lead to Smith’s slump-busting game. For one, Martin noted that he benefited from the team’s 11-day break between games that resulted from a positive COVID-19 test. Smith leads Missouri in minutes played, and he has also been playing through a sore wrist, although both he and Martin dismissed questions about the injury, a diagnosis for which has not been revealed.

Smith also stayed out of foul trouble against Texas A&M. Fouls have been an issue for him this season; he had at least three in Missouri’s past eight games in a row prior to Saturday, and in five of those he got whistled for four fouls. Against Texas A&M, he committed just one foul, allowing him to play a game-high 37 minutes.

“I think it definitely helped me out a lot just to not be in foul trouble,” Smith said Monday. “Something that obviously I have to work on and something I gotta make sure that I’m just conscious of throughout the game, making sure that I don’t have two in the first half and then anything early in the second. So I think just being able to get into the rhythm, get into the flow, I think it definitely helped.”

Not only did Smith play more than he has in most games this season against Texas A&M, he was more assertive with the ball in his hands. Smith attempted a season-high 14 shots, including six three-pointers. Martin said the coaching staff, particularly assistant Cornell Mann, have been pushing Smith to look for his own shot more often.

“He just tells me to be aggressive, shoot the ball if I’m open,” Smith said of Mann. “Basically what he tells me is if I’ve got a look, the ball should be going up. Like I shouldn’t be passing up open looks.”

Smith’s coaches and teammates will hope he can continue the success going forward. Fellow senior guard Drew Buggs echoed Martin’s words about the importance of Smith, saying when Smith is able to stay on the floor and make his presence felt on the offensive end, Missouri looks like a different team than when he’s on the bench or out of sync.

“It’s big for us,” Buggs said. “Dru’s a guy that makes an impact in numerous ways on the court, and you can just feel his presence out there, so when he’s firing on all cylinders, just doing what he’s usually doing, it’s big for this team. It makes us hard to guard, and it makes us even better on the defensive end, as well.”

Brown draws praise for defense, rebounding

Smith was one of three Missouri players to score in double-figures against Texas A&M, along with Jeremiah Tilmon and Javon Pickett. Yet it was a different player who drew the most praise from Martin after the game. Martin said that he thought sophomore Kobe Brown played the best game of his college career in the win over the Aggies.

“I thought this was Kobe’s best game since he’s been in a Mizzou uniform, in my opinion,” Martin said. “That physical brand and that going toe-to-toe, I thought he did a great job.”

It wasn’t Brown’s offense that earned the high praise, although he did chip in nine points, seven of which came in the second half. Instead, both Martin and his teammates praised Brown’s defense against Texas A&M leading scorer Emanuel Miller and his five rebounds. Miller entered Saturday averaging 16.6 points per game but scored just nine against the Tigers.

“I definitely think it was one of his best games, and it doesn’t have to do much with him scoring the ball,” Smith said of Brown. “We know he can score and we know he can knock down open shots, it’s more about him on the defensive end and blocking out and getting rebounds. I think he did a great job of keeping Miller off the glass. That was one of our big keys going into the game, just trying to control the glass, and I thought he did a great job of helping us out with that.”

On the season, Brown is averaging 0.8 more points and 1.8 more rebounds per game than he did during his freshman campaign, despite playing slightly fewer minutes. He attributed the improvement to simply getting more comfortable with the college game. He said Martin, who has been vocal at times about wanting more from Brown, made a point after the game of letting Brown know he was proud of his performance.

“He was proud of me for locking in on my assignments and just coming in with toughness and grit,” Brown said, “and just taking care of my assignment and my role for that game and keeping (Miller) and the four men on their team off the boards.”

Tigers preparing for mysterious test

Most years, by the time conference play arrives, there are very few unknown commodities. Coaches are familiar with one another and each team has well-defined strengths and weaknesses.

Of course, this season has been far from normal, and as a result, Missouri finds itself in an unusual position as it prepares to host South Carolina on Tuesday.

The Gamecocks have seen their season impacted more severely by COVID-19 than any other program in the country. They’ve paused team activities three times due to the virus since early December, had seven games canceled and played just six times. Last week, head coach Frank Martin revealed that he recently tested positive for COVID-19 for a second time. He said that he hopes to return from isolation in time to coach against Missouri. South Carolina lost at LSU on Saturday with Bruce Shingler serving as interim head coach.

As a result, there’s not a lot of film available on South Carolina, which is 1-1 in SEC play, although it is worth pointing out that the Gamecocks return their two leading scorers from last season in A.J. Lawson and Jermaine Cousinard. Smith said Mann drew the task of putting together a scouting report on the Gamecocks.

“I think coach Corn is doing the scout, so he’s preparing us the best that he can,” Smith said. “There’s not that much material out there, but I think we’ve been able to get the gist of what they like to do.”

What South Carolina likes to do, players said, is get up and down the court and score in transition. The Gamecocks average 72.3 points per game on the year and play at the 21st-fastest tempo nationally, according to Ken Pomeroy.

As a result, key for Missouri will be getting back on defense, forcing South Carolina to score in the half court versus on fast breaks, and limiting transition opportunities by taking care of the ball. Turnovers have been an issue at times for the Tigers this year, as they’ve given the ball away at least 14 times in six of 10 games.

“We think they’re a very good team early in the shot clock and in transition, so defensively we want to make them use as much clock as they can and not allow any easy baskets,” Buggs explained. “Offensively we want to just continue to move the ball, share the ball, play inside-out and take care of the ball. I think that’s our biggest concern offensively is just taking care of the ball.”

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