Post-Game Report: Missouri 54, Bradley 53
Missouri improved to 6-and-0 with a come-from-behind 54-53 win over Bradley. We begin our post-game report with five things we learned from the game.
*When Jeremiah Tilmon flips a switch, he can be dominant. But sometimes, he needs to be reminded to flip the switch.
"Coach Martin made it obvious I wasn’t playing as hard as I was supposed to be playing," Tilmon said of a one-point, three-rebound first half. "That was on me.
"I just have to be a man and own up to it and play harder."
Boy, did he.
With ten seconds left in the game, Tilmon was up to nine points and ten rebounds. But Missouri still trailed 53-51 when Jayson Kent stepped to the free throw line for Bradley. Kent had taken just two free throws all season and had made them both. But he missed the front end of a one-and-one that could have iced the game for the Braves. Dru Smith rebounded and, with eight second left, the Tigers headed up court.
"We had a play if he’d have made them," head coach Cuonzo Martin said. "If he misses, speed dribble, our shooters space out, we have a guy coming in trailing, but really X (Xavier Pinson) get to the rim, force them to help up, you either have Tilly, you get to the rim or you find your shooters in the corners.
Pinson drove and dished to Tilmon, who was--literally--underneath the basket. Standing nearly on the baseline, Tilmon twisted, leaned back and laid the ball in with one second left. He was fouled by Elijah Childs and went to the line for a free throw that would put the Tigers up a point with a second left to play.
"I’m not gonna lie I thought Tilly was underneath the basket," Mitchell Smith said. "I don’t know how he made it really, but he stretched out, he focused on the basket and he made it."
"Before the game that’s part of our pregame routine," Tilmon said. "Coach (Chris) Hollender has us working on shots like that when the guard’s coming in, we’ve got to drop to our room, that’s what he calls it, and then finish real quick. That was probably second nature for us honestly."
But the toughest part still remained: the free throw. Tilmon had made just 7 of his 19 free throw attempts in Missouri's first five games.
"As I was walking up to the free throw line I was still laughing and smiling so I had to tell myself to calm down," Tilmon said. "The first couple of games I haven’t been shooting my free throws as well as I’m supposed to."
But this one was pure. The Tigers led 54-53, survived two deflected inbounds passes by the Braves, and finished the game on a 10-1 run to stay perfect on the season.
"Coach normally tells us to leave him alone," Pinson said. "But I just had to tell him he had to make it. He had to make that one."
He did. He flipped the switch, just as he did in a three-minute stretch against Liberty earlier this season, and delivered the Tigers their sixth straight win.
"Everybody’s not gonna start off how they want to. It’s about how you finish I feel like. No matter how he started off, you saw the finish that he made," Pinson said. "With Til, he just knows, when we need him, we need him and he has to come through. Today he came through for us."
*It doesn't have to go perfectly to work. Martin had prepared Missouri for every scenario prior to Kent's miss. They could have been down two, three or four. The only consistent directive for Martin was to get the ball to the lane.
"Attack the rim and get Tilly behind the rim to make a play," Martin said. "But they had to get to the rim. Get that thing at the rim and not settle for threes."
Pinson did it...but not exactly how it was designed. Mark Smith caught the ball, stepped across midcourt with one foot and then kicked it back to Pinson in the backcourt. It wasn't a backcourt violation--both feet and the ball have to be across midcourt for that to be the case--but it looked briefly like Missouri might have turned the ball over without a chance at a shot.
"Honestly it was a whole different play set up but we kind of hesitated bringing the ball down and after we almost got the back court call, I just had to take off and try to create something," Pinson said. "Just a basketball play and a nice finish by Til."
It may not have been designed, but it worked.
"It looked kind of funky," Mitchell Smith said. "But X played it off real smooth and we got past that part."
*This team still doesn't shoot the ball very well. Credit Bradley. Martin said he thought 80% of the offensive struggles were a credit to the Braves' defense. They're long and athletic and they entered the game third in the country in two-point field goal percentage defense.
But not every shot Missouri missed was guarded. The Tigers finished the night just 3-for-21 from three-point range with Pinson making all three. Martin said he thought Missouri had some good looks, but settled for plenty of bad ones as well.
"I think we’re a better three point shooting than what we’ve shown, but you can’t settle for them," Martin said. "You have to understand who you are. If you're a spot shooter, be that. You have to know your role."
The worst came on the possession just before Kent's free throw. Down 53-51, Mark Smith pump-faked from the right wing on a semi-guarded three, to take one dribble and attempt an even more guarded three. Asked if that was the shot he wanted, Martin laughed.
"That wasn’t by design at all," he said.
The Tigers were awful from three-point range, but not much better inside the arc. Mizzou shot just 25.4% from the floor, the worst shooting percentage in a win going back at least eight seasons (and probably more). Missouri made only 13 of its first 59 shots before making three of its final four.
The Tigers had entered the game shooting 61.2% from two-point range this season. So the 10-for-25 performance on layups is probably more of an aberration than a concern. But the three-point woes have been consistent all season. Mizzou is now shooting 28.4% from deep, more than a full percentage point worse than last year's team, which was the worst three-point shooting team in school history and one of the worst in the country.
*Tilmon isn't the main worry spot for foul trouble. The big man gets most of the attention for it, but Dru Smith might actually be a bigger issue. Smith picked up his fourth foul with twelve-and-a-half-minutes to play against the Braves and had to be used carefully down the stretch.
He didn't foul out of the game, but Smith was limited to 23 minutes. In the 17 he was on the bench, the Tigers were outscored by seven points. He's simply too important to Missouri to spend as much time as he does in foul trouble. It hasn't burned the Tigers yet, but they're about to be tested more than they have with SEC play eight days away.
*This team can compete for an SEC title. Last year, Martin frequently said he thought his team had as much talent as anyone in the league. Frankly, it seemed like a stretch, healthy or not. This year, it doesn't.
Missouri is undefeated. It has beaten as many as four NCAA Tournament teams (Liberty and Bradley will contend for bids in their conferences), has beaten two ranked teams, has a road win and a neutral site win. The Tigers have been more impressive than any team in the SEC through the first month of the season.
And they haven't even played a complete game yet. The Tigers have won shooting 25%, they've won with Tilmon on the bench in foul trouble, they've won on off nights for every one of the key players in their rotation. But they've won. Every night.
"Without question if you’re healthy you got a chance. No question you got a chance," Martin said of the Tigers' ability to win a league title. "I like our chances against anybody anywhere."
They'll be tested right out of the gate. The league opener is next Wednesday night against Tennessee, the pre-season pick to win the SEC.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: You may have noticed but the shooting was, well, hideous. Missouri shot 25.4% for the game, making just 16 of its 63 field goal attempts. That included a 3-for-21 effort from three-point range and a collective oh-fer other than Xavier Pinson. The Tigers did come up big when it counted, though. After a 13-for-59 start, Missouri made three of its last four field goal attempts and its final four free throws to finish the game on a 10-1 run.
STAR OF THE GAME: It's obviously Tilmon. He had 12 points, 10 rebounds and made his final three free throws, including the game-winner with one second left. In 27 minutes, he committed three fouls and had just one turnover (an offensive foul). In the second half alone, Tilmon had 11 points and 7 rebounds and rescued the Tigers from their first defeat.
Honorable mention goes to Mitchell Smith, who had four points, nine rebounds and three blocked shots before batting the final inbounds pass over the scorer's table to ensure Bradley couldn't get off a last second prayer.
WHAT IT MEANS: Missouri finishes the pre-SEC schedule unbeaten. The Tigers still have one non-conference game, against TCU in the Big 12/SEC Challenge, to go, but they've won all six of their games before Tennessee comes to Columbia to open league play a week from Wednesday. The Tigers and Volunteers are two of the four SEC teams (Georgia and Arkansas are the others) who haven't lost a game this season. Tennessee was the pre-season pick to win the league, but Missouri has to be at least in that conversation at this point in time. Next week's opener isn't going to decide anything, but it could be an early indicator as to which team should be considered the favorite to wear the crown.
QUOTABLE: “We was down eight in the last minutes and I'm not gonna lie, I was a little worried. I was a little worried. But my teammates was there to get my focus back in. They were steady repeating the same thing: 'We done been here before, we done been here before.' It was just up to us to lock in and grind it out for those last few minutes.” -- Jeremiah Tilmon on Mizzou finishing the game on a 10-1 run
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