Missouri’s first basketball game of the season served as an introduction to Tiger fans for the team’s plethora of new players. Missouri remade its roster during the offseason, bringing in five true freshmen and four transfers, several of whom took to a new-look Norm Stewart Court for the first time in front of fans Tuesday when the Tigers hosted Central Michigan.
In the end, it was the two familiar faces who helped Missouri pull out a 78-68 win.
After Central Michigan’s Miroslav Stafl made a layup to cut Missouri’s lead to two points with 3:22 to play, the Tigers’ lone senior, Javon Pickett, answered with a three-pointer from the left wing. Pickett led the team with both 18 points and 39 minutes. Junior Kobe Brown, who had been quiet for most of the night while battling foul trouble, then took over. Brown scored the next seven Missouri points, three of them coming off offensive rebounds. He finished the game with 10 points and nine boards.
“I thought Javon was great, his leadership was great,” head coach Cuonzo Martin said after the game. “But it’s been that way since June. I thought Kobe struggled from the standpoint of flow, the flow of the game, but I thought he stepped up late. He wasn’t passive with those four fouls, which I thought was good.”
Here is our full report from our first look at this year's Tiger team, including five things we learned.
1. Pickett is no longer just a sixth-man spark plug. Not only did he start, he served as one of the Tigers’ most aggressive offensive initiators. Pickett tied for the team lead with 14 field goal attempts. He shot six three-pointers after averaging just one attempt per game from behind the arc last season.
Pickett started the scoring for the Tigers, making the first bucket of the game and scoring six of the team’s first 10 points. He had 13 in the first half. He then delivered perhaps the biggest bucket of the night with his three-pointer in the final minutes.
After the game, Pickett’s teammates praised him more for his leadership than his offensive output. With the majority of Missouri’s team playing their first game in a Tiger uniform (and their first game in almost two years in front of a significant crowd), Pickett helped the group weather Central Michigan’s two second-half runs.
“He was like getting on us when they had made a run in the second half,” Green Bay transfer Amari Davis said. “He was getting on us, like, we gotta lock up, get stops, can’t let them get back in the game. Like just throughout the whole game, even in the locker room at halftime and before the game, he’s just giving us energy, getting on us.”
Martin said Pickett “set the tone early” with his aggressive offensive play. While a more assertive Pickett might be a new sight for Tiger fans, Martin said he wasn’t surprised by the senior’s performance. He’s played that way since the team started practicing together in June. And his even-keeled, hard-working approach is the same one he’s had since arriving on campus four years ago.
“Javon’s approach is always the same,” Martin said. “The one difference, he’s just a senior now. And guys lean on him for counsel, leadership, how to go about their daily business. But other than that, his approach is always the same. You can watch him in practice, you know he’s a leader, he brings it to the table, he works extremely hard. He’s not afraid to challenge guys in the right way. I thought he was great. But he’s the same old Javon, he’s just a senior.”
2. Of all the newcomers, Ronnie DeGray III might have had the most impressive debut. Both Davis and Ball State transfer Boogie Coleman scored more points, but DeGray stuffed the stat sheet. He logged a double-double in his Missouri debut with 13 points and 12 rebounds. He also logged three blocks and an assist in 31 minutes.
Martin said he expected that type of contribution from DeGray, who transferred to Missouri after averaging 8.7 points and 4.6 rebounds during his lone season at Massachusetts. He complimented DeGray on his rebounding ability and his team-first approach.
“We knew what he brings to the table from the standpoint of his character, his composure, his work ethic,” he said. “Tremendous offensive rebounder, a guy who can guard all five positions. Competes at a high level. It’s not so much consumed with I’m starting or coming off the bench, he’s just about winning. He embraces the matchups every day with Kobe in practice, and I think that helps him. You need him out there, because it’s tough for big men to guard him. He’s a better three-point shooter than probably what he showed tonight, but he’s a tremendous offensive rebounder.”
DeGray concurred, saying his mindset is trying to bring whatever the team needs off the bench, whether it’s scoring or rebounding. Degray showed his versatility, playing multiple forward spots, including center when Wilmore was out of the game. He believes his combination of size, speed and shooting ability can provide favorable matchups in the frontcourt.
“Me playing the five, I think it just creates a lot of mismatches,” DeGray said. “Most fives are a little bit slower, so I think I just use my speed to my advantage.”
3. It wasn’t DeGray who started at the center spot, but sophomore Jordan Wilmore. The 7-foot-3 Wilmore, who played just 21 minutes all of last year, saw 13 minutes of action Tuesday. He finished with two points on 1-4 shooting.
Martin said Wilmore's playing time was limited by the fact that Stafl, Central Michigan’s center, showed an ability to knock down shots from the perimeter and drive to the basket, which made him a tough defensive assignment for the big man. Overall, though, he was pleased with what Wilmore brought to the floor aside from a few missed layups.
“Outside of him missing those layups around the rim, I thought he did some good things,” Martin said. “But you’re talking about a guy who didn’t play a lot of meaningful minutes last year, and now he’s in the mix of things as a starter. That’s a major adjustment at this level. I think he’ll adjust to it.”
Missouri spent the majority of the game with a smaller lineup on the floor. It’s difficult to read too much into how playing time will shake out moving forward, however, because Missouri was short-handed Tuesday. Kansas State transfer Dajuan Gordon missed the game while serving a one-game NCAA suspension due to him playing in an unsanctioned game over the summer. Martin stressed that Gordon will be heavily involved in the rotation once he returns. Freshmen Kaleb Brown and Trevon Brazile also did not suit up. Brown was sidelined by an illness, while Brazile was “medically unavailable,” per the team. Asked whether he could shed any light on Brazile’s situation or when he might appear in a game, Martin said “not yet.”
As such, all nine available players saw the floor for Missouri, although freshman Sean Durugordon played only one minute. Martin said freshman Anton Brookshire, who played nine minutes, will be more involved moving forward.
“We have to find a way to get Anton more minutes, because he’s one of your better three-point shooters,” Martin said. “Just really settling in, that was a big challenge for him, guarding (Jermaine Jackson Jr.) the second half.”
4. Regardless of who was on the floor, Missouri dominated the glass, particularly on the offensive end. The Tigers out-rebounded the Chippewas 44-31 overall, including 16-10 on offensive boards. Missouri scored 18 second-chance points compared to seven for Central Michigan. In a 10-point game, that obviously loomed large. DeGray led the way with seven offensive rebounds.
Martin, who has preached the value of rebounding and effort since arriving at Missouri, expressed pleasure with his team’s hustle on the boards.
“More than anything that’s who I am,” Martin said. “Now whether or not you’ve seen it on a consistent basis is one thing, but that’s who I am. You have to play hard. You have to play as hard as you can play.”
5. The offense looked solid in the first half but stalled in the second, which allowed Central Michigan to nearly erase Missouri’s 16-point halftime lead. A few factors contributed to the stagnation. The most significant one, according to Martin, was his team “getting comfortable” with its lead.
The Tigers also struggled to adjust when Central Michigan switched its defense from man to zone. Martin said he’s not worried that could become a trend, saying “I really don’t mind zone at all.” He noted that his new-look team hasn’t seen much zone in practice since the Tigers virtually never run it themselves. He also said the team got less aggressive once Central Michigan made the defensive switch, looking for transition scoring opportunities less often.
“I thought instead of pushing, getting out and pushing, we walked it up because it was a zone set as opposed to staying aggressive,” Martin said.
Star of the Game: Not only did Pickett lead Missouri in scoring, he grabbed five rebounds, dished three assists and had three steals. He helped the Tigers get several easy baskets in transition, either by bringing the ball up the court himself after a steal or running the floor and getting behind the defense. That’s something Martin wants to see more of from this team.
Room for Improvement: Coleman and Davis each chipped in 14 points, but Martin said after the game he would like to see more aggressiveness from each player. All four of Coleman’s made field goals came from behind the three-point arc. Davis, not known as a three-point shooter during his two seasons at Green Bay, also made two triples. Six of his 14 shots came from behind the arc.
Martin said both players were a bit too content to shoot from deep once Central Michigan switched to a zone.
“I thought he settled on the perimeter for three-point shots because he was making them as opposed to getting downhill and driving the ball,” Martin said of Coleman. “I think he might have had two or three shot clock violations with the ball in his hands.”
What it means: It’s virtually impossible to gauge how good this Missouri team is based solely off the season-opener. Not only did the Tiger roster feature a majority of new faces, Central Michigan brought 12 new players and a new coach to Columbia. However, it’s much better to avoid a loss to a mid-major than the alternative, especially taking the floor with just nine available players. And no win can be taken for granted this early in the season. Case in point: Nebraska lost to Western Illinois Tuesday, while Houston needed overtime to beat Hofstra and Montana State took Colorado to overtime.
Next up: Missouri hosts UMKC on Monday. The ‘Roos opened their season with a 71-56 loss at Minnesota on Tuesday. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m.
Quotable: “Great win for our guys to start the season. I thought the fan energy, I thought the student section was tremendous, in my opinion. … I thought they were great, I thought the energy was high level. Even had some students camping out the night before, so that was great. And I thought our guys put on a good performance. Got a little stagnant there in the second half, but I thought we found a way to win the game, especially being short-handed.” -- Cuonzo Martin
Talk about this story and more in The Tigers' Lair
Make sure you're caught up on all the Tiger news and headlines
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video and live streaming coverage
