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Despite trailing by eight points with less than two minutes to play, Missouri looked for a moment like it might pull off a March miracle. Dru Smith drained contested three-pointers from the left wing on consecutive possessions, and Oklahoma's Ellijah Harkless missed the Sooners' only free throw of the second half in between, meaning the Tigers trailed by just three points with 46.7 seconds to play. Head coach Cuonzo Martin elected not to foul, and the Tiger players rewarded him by forcing a turnover.
Ninth-seeded Missouri possessed the ball with a chance to tie. But a disjointed possession ended in eight-seed Oklahoma fouling Drew Buggs with 2.5 seconds left. Buggs made his first free throw and missed his second on purpose, but the Tigers couldn't control the rebound. Oklahoma's Jalen Hill, who started in place of De'Vion Harmon, grabbed the ball and knocked down both free throws after being fouled, ending Missouri's season. Oklahoma prevailed 72-68.
After starting this season 13-3, the Tigers finish with a record of 16-10. The program will have to wait at least one more year to end its drought without an NCAA Tournament victory, which dates back to 2010. Oklahoma, meanwhile, will advance to the Round of 32 in the West region, where the Sooners will face No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga.
Here is our full report on the game, including what we learned.
* Missouri had the ball with a chance to tie the game with a three-pointer in the final seconds, yet the Tigers never got a shot off. Let's take a closer look at what happened.
Missouri used its last timeout of the game after Smith hit his final three-pointer, which cut the lead to three points with 46.7 seconds left. Martin used the timeout to instruct his team not to foul and draw up a play for a three should the Tigers get a stop.
That stop actually came sooner than expected when Oklahoma's Austin Reaves control of the ball. It wound up in the hands of Smith, and the Tigers hurried down the floor in search of a transition scoring opportunity. The frenetic nature of the play made it impossible to run the action Martin had called during the timeout, he said.
"The last possession we didn't have any timeouts," Martin said. "We had a play executed, but what happened they didn't get a shot up. So guys came down scrambling. They went at Dru Smith. Kobe Brown had an opportunity, so we had to play drawn up, but again time ran out."
Smith dribbled to the left wing, where he just hit two shots in a row. He initially looked for a two-point basket, however, throwing the ball inside to big man Jeremiah Tilmon. An Oklahoma defender poked it away, and the ball got batted into the air and outside the three-point arc. Missouri recovered possession but lost valuable seconds. Oklahoma head coach Lon Kruger said after the game he had instructed his players to foul if leading by three points with less than six seconds on the clock. By the time the ball found its way to Buggs, the Sooners executed that strategy, fouling him with 2.5 seconds left.
Buggs executed the strategy of making the first free throw and missing the second on purpose, the Tigers just couldn't come up with the rebound.
* While Missouri still had a chance to tie the game in the final minute, the decisive stretch came in the 90 seconds following the final media timeout. Smith knocked down two free throws out of the stoppage, then Oklahoma scored seven straight points, extending its lead from one point to eight. Missouri was never able to close the deficit.
The run started when Sooner center Brady Manek knocked down his fifth and biggest three-pointer of the game. Missouri then failed to answer on the other end, as Buggs threw a bad pass that clanged off the backboard and wound up in the hands of Oklahoma. The Sooners came quickly down the floor and Harkless hit Buggs with a nasty crossover, which created enough space for him to sink a 15-foot jumper.
On Missouri's next possession, Mitchell Smith — playing because Tilmon had picked up his fourth foul with 4:04 to play and was still on the bench — got the ball at the top of the key. Oklahoma's defense shrank away from him, denying any potential passing lanes to the low post and daring Smith to shoot a three-pointer.
He did. The shot glanced off the rim. Reaves then drew a foul on Brown on the other end and made both free throws, extending the Sooner lead to eight points. Martin called timeout following the Reaves free throws and inserted Tilmon back into the game, but by that point the deficit proved too much to overcome.
That was just one example of what Martin said was Oklahoma's defensive strategy all night: Pack the paint and make the Missouri forwards not named Tilmon beat it, especially from the perimeter. The game plan largely worked.
"Their goal was to make our fours beat them," Martin said. "So if your fours beat us making threes and making plays, then so be it."
* Point guard Xavier Pinson started Saturday's game well. Pinson, who has been a bit mercurial this season, got a steal on the game's first possession and drove the length of the floor before dishing to Tilmon for a layup. After Oklahoma missed a shot on its next trip, Pinson blew past everyone for a layup of his own.
Yet after playing all of the first five and a half minutes, Pinson played just 13 of the game's final 34 and a half. He played only four minutes in the second half. Instead, Martin rode Buggs down the stretch.
Buggs finished the game with three points, one assist and one turnover in 22 minutes. Pinson, meanwhile, scored two points while dishing five assists compared to two turnovers. Despite Pinson's ability to use his quickness to create for himself and others, Martin said he felt like Missouri's offense had a better flow with Buggs in the game, and that Buggs did a better job on the defensive end, as well.
"I think really we got into a flow with Buggs," Martin said. "We got a real flow, we got back in the game with Buggs, and it just went from there, and I thought Buggs did a great job on both sides of the basketball."
* Manek's three-pointer in the final four minutes wasn't his only big shot from the perimeter. The Oklahoma center, who hit four shots from behind the arc when the Sooners beat Missouri last season, knocked down five threes this time around, three of which came in the second half.
"Making those threes early and then that one late to take it to four, I think it was, it was a huge shot," Kruger said of Manek.
In an effort to keep Manek in check, Martin didn't ask Tilmon to guard him for most of the game. Instead, the players at the four spot — some combination of Brown, Mitchell Smith and Javon Pickett — drew the assignment. Martin said Manek getting open wasn't an issue of him making shots over shorter defenders, but his makes generally occurred after breakdowns by the Missouri defense. His final three came after the Tiger defense, including Mitchell Smith, collapsed around Hill, who was defended by Tilmon in the low post. Hill then found an open Manek.
"I think that was more breakdowns as opposed to great actions, he's getting open," Martin said. "It was just breakdowns, guys didn't go up to the line and contest the shot like they needed to. I think it was two of them by Kobe, two of them when Kobe was defending and I think one with Mitch."
* No Missouri players necessarily have to leave the roster during the offseason due to the NCAA's decision to give every player an extra season of eligibility as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Saturday will almost certainly represent the final game in a Tiger uniform for most, if not all, of the team's five seniors.
Two of those seniors, Dru Smith and Tilmon, did all they could to keep the team in the game. The Missouri offense fed Tilmon early and often. While he struggled a bit to convert around the rim, he more than answered Oklahoma's physicality. Despite facing two defenders virtually every time he touched the ball, Tilmon finished the game with 16 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks in 30 minutes.
"I expected what happened tonight, them sending the double team and either coming from the back side or the high side," Tilmon saids. "Just knowing which way they're coming from, and I was expecting that ,and that's what happened, honestly."
Dru Smith, meanwhile, started slow, scoring just three points on 1-6 shooting in the first half. He caught fire in the second, however, and single-handedly made the game competitive in the final minute. Smith shot 5-8 from three-point range in the second half and scored 17 points in the final 20 minutes. All in all, Missouri's leading scorer played all but one minute and finished with 20 points, two rebounds, two assists and three steals.
"He had a heck of a challenge on the defensive side of the ball with Reaves, who is a very talented player, and he embraced that challenge," Martin said of Dru Smith. "Then on the offensive side of the ball, you still got to score and make plays, and he did both. Both those guys played an extraordinarily basketball game, and they will both play for a long time at the highest level."
Martin took a moment after the game to reflect on the contributions of the senior class as a whole. He said the class of Dru Smith, Mark Smith, Mitchell Smith, Buggs and Tilmon played a key role in resuscitating a program that had averaged nine wins across the three seasons prior to Martin's arrival.
"They did a great job of getting us back where we need to be as a program," he said. "We'll continue to make progress as a program. So they did that. They stayed the course. Again, this year had a lot of things take place in it, on and off the court. And I thought our guys did an admirable job of being professional, taking it as it comes, not complaining, not making excuses. So I'm really proud of those guys, they really matured, great senior group and just I think, simply said, they were professionals from start to finish."
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: Missouri has never specialized in the half-court offense, and that weakness got exposed a bit by Oklahoma. The Sooners turned the ball over just six times, which limited the Tigers' opportunities to get out and run (although Missouri still managed 10 fast-break points). The Tigers struggled to get the ball inside the three-point arc, particularly in the first half. After making six of its first seven field goals in the game (three of which came in transition), Missouri made just five of its next 20.
Overall, the Tigers shot 22-58 (37.9 percent) from the field, quite a bit below its season average of 44.9 percent. While the team shot the three-ball better than usual, making 11 of 27 shots from behind the arc, there were a few times when Martin felt like the offense settled for shots from the perimeter when it should have attacked the basket. He specifically mentioned a stretch in the final six minutes of the game when Dru Smith, Mark Smith and Brown all missed deep threes on consecutive possessions.
"I thought we had a stretch where it might have been two or three air balls in the stretch there, one of them was a deep one," Martin said. "And we were obviously still in the game, but that's when we have to capitalize, execute what we're doing and get a good shot and make a good decision.
STAR OF THE GAME: After the final horn sounded, Tilmon covered his face with his jersey before walking slowly off the floor. The four-year big man (likely) ended his Missouri career the way he played much of his senior season. Despite drawing two defenders virtually every time he touched the ball on the offensive end, he recorded his eighth double-double of the year. His importance might have been best illustrated by Oklahoma's late 7-0 run when he was on the bench.
"I've had an exciting four years," Tilmon said when asked to reflect on his college career. "I don't regret anything for being here. ... This year was the year we played (in the NCAA Tournament) again and we was just trying to get further than what we did the first time and just take each game at a time, one step at a time, take it each game one by one. We didn't get the outcome we wanted though, but we're going to keep our heads high."
WHAT IT MEANS: A once-promising season has ended with Missouri losing six of its final 10 games and once more failing to reach the NCAA Tournament round of 32. The Tigers will likely face a bit of a rebuild in the offseason. No senior has yet announced a decision about whether or not he will return to the roster, but it would come as an upset if Dru Smith or Tilmon returned. Saturday will likely only fuel speculations that Pinson could depart, as well. Through four years at Missouri, Martin's record now stands at 66-56.
QUOTABLE: “Hard-fought game from both teams. They played well. Obviously great game, down to the wire. We came up short. Reaves was exceptional with the ball making-decisions. Manek made some big-time threes. We had some breakdowns when he made them, and they did the right things to win the game down the stretch." -- Cuonzo Martin
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