Getting Missouri on the court against Mississippi State this season has been a logistical mess. The Tigers were originally scheduled to host the first matchup of the year against the Bulldogs on Jan. 5, but a COVID-19 outbreak on the roster necessitated a postponement. As a result, instead of playing in Starkville on Saturday, the two teams played there Friday night and will return to Columbia for a rematch on Sunday.
But even Friday's matchup didn't go off without a hitch. Missouri's travel got delayed due to the snowstorm that hit mid-Missouri on Thursday, and the Tiger team didn't make it to Starkville until around 3:30 Friday afternoon. So tipoff was pushed back from 6 p.m. to 8:30.
When the game finally started, things didn't go much more smoothly for Missouri. Whether or not it was due to a lack of a pregame shootaround, the Tigers endured two different stretches of more than five minutes without a field goal during the first half, which allowed the Bulldogs to build an 11-point lead. Missouri could never erase the deficit. Mississippi State led for the entire second half and led by double digits for the last 13:28.
“We didn’t have a shootaround, we didn’t have anything," Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin said. "I think, no excuses, but at the end of the day, when you’re trying to prepare for a game, the mental edge is just as important. My game routine, my pregame, my rest, all of that is important. And to have us at the airport from 8:30 until almost 2 o’clock, that’s a long time."
The 68-49 loss marked the second consecutive 19-point defeat for the Tigers. It dropped the team to six games below .500 (10-16), the furthest the team has been from that mark during Martin's five years as head coach.
Here are five things we learned from the loss.
1. Mississippi State essentially dared Missouri to beat it from three-point range, and the Tigers couldn't do so. The Tigers made just three of 17 attempts from behind the arc.
Missouri entered Friday's game shooting 28.6 percent from three on the season, worst among all high-major teams. Still, Martin said that he wasn't upset with the majority of the shots his team attempted from the perimeter. With its defense packed into the paint, Mississippi State regularly left Tiger players, particularly forwards Kobe Brown and Ronnie DeGray, unguarded from three-point range. Yet Missouri couldn't get the shots to fall. The performance marked the seventh time this season the Tigers have converted fewer than 20 percent of their three-point attempts.
"I thought the ones with Kobe and Ronnie, those are wide open threes," Martin said. "Those have to fall."
2. The Tigers' shooting struggles made scoring around the basket especially difficult.
Missouri mustered just 20 points in the paint, its fewest against an SEC opponent this season. Mississippi State, meanwhile, scored 34. Martin said the Bulldog big men "imposed their will."
"Their bigs put pressure on us in the low post," he said. "I thought that was the big difference. I thought we did a solid job on (Iverson) Molinar. I thought their two bigs just imposed their will on us.”
On the offensive end, Martin said he would have liked to see a bit more aggression from his team in attacking the paint, particularly during the first half. However, even when the Tigers did get the ball around the rim, they generally found it difficult to convert. The team only shot 38.2 percent from two-point range. Add that to the cold outside shooting and the Tigers produced their third-worst shooting performance and third-lowest scoring total of the season.
“I just think we were rushing shots," DeGray said. "We weren’t taking it strong to the hoop, and we wanted the foul call instead of just going through contact and finishing. Because they’re not really trying to block shots, they were just walling up. So I think we were trying to get more of a foul instead of making the shot.”
On the other end of the floor, Mississippi State's starting frontcourt of Garrison Brooks and Tolu Smith combined to score 26 points and grab 10 rebounds. While both players stand 6-foot-10, taller than Missouri's biggest player who saw the court Friday, Martin still thought his bigs could have done a better job defending and rebounding.
"We didn’t do a great job with those bigs on the low blocks, keeping them off the blocks, blocking them out and being physical down there," he said. "We didn’t double aggressively, like we were hesitant to let double. We didn’t impose our will, and I think that’s what the difference was in the game.”
3. Missouri's backcourt certainly isn't immune from blame. It was a rough night for the Tiger guards. Boogie Coleman, who came off the bench for the first time since December, scored five points on 1-7 shooting. DaJuan Gordon mustered six points while shooting 3-8. And Amari Davis failed to make a field goal while scoring only two points. It marked the second game in a row that Davis has not made a shot.
It wasn't just the scoring, or lack thereof, that proved problematic. Missouri gave Mississippi State several easy scoring opportunities via live ball turnovers. Davis committed the two most egregious examples. With the Bulldog offense struggling to get going early, Davis threw passes on consecutive possessions that were intercepted by Mississippi State's Anderson Garcia and taken the other way for fast break layups. Martin said those plays helped the Bulldogs establish momentum.
"Two of them were uncharacteristic by Amari, because he’s a guy that’s normally sound with the basketball," Martin said. "And it just kind of turned the game."
Coleman also committed a pair of turnovers. In all, Missouri only gave the ball away 13 times, but Mississippi State scored 18 points off those turnovers.
4. Martin pulled Coleman from the starting lineup to try to get more out of him. That didn't appear to work.
Coleman's offensive slump continued at Mississippi State. He has now scored five or fewer points in each of Missouri's past four games. He's shot 4-27 during that span. But it's not just the shooting Martin wants to see improve, but his ability to run the offense and play with more intensity on the defensive end.
“I wanted to see Boogie be better," Martin said. "And not so much as far as the shot is falling, but to play harder, to compete at a level we need him to compete at.”
5. The Tigers will have less than 48 hours to resolve Friday night's issues. The weekend home-and-home with Mississippi State puts Missouri in a unique position. The good news, perhaps, is the team won't have long to dwell on another loss. The bad is that it won't have a lot of practice time to correct the things that made Friday's game non-competitive.
Fatigue could also be a factor. This marked the third game in a row that Missouri has only had eight players available due to injuries. Martin said he thought his team "ran out of gas" during the second half Friday.
“Certainly rest," Martin said when asked how the team will prepare for Sunday's game. "I think with rest and just watching a little film, we’ll be fine. I’m looking forward to it.”
Star of the Game: DeGray provided a solid performance in his fourth start of the season. He grabbed a team-high 13 points and grabbed five rebounds. Martin praised his aggressiveness, which was evident in the fact that he got to the free throw line six times. The performance marked the fourth time in the past six games that DeGray has scored more than 10 points.
Room for Improvement: More often than not lately, Brown has been held in check by Missouri's opponents. The Tigers struggle mightily to win when that is the case. Brown, who was limited to 27 minutes due to first half foul trouble on Friday, scored eight points on just 3-10 shooting. Missouri is now 0-12 this season when its leading scorer fails to reach double figures.
What it means: Things are trending the wrong way for Missouri. Dropping two games in a row is nothing new for this team, but until this week, the Tigers had generally been competitive in most of their losses during conference play. Against Arkansas and Mississippi State, the team lost by a combined 38 points and trailed for 69:49 of a possible 80 minutes.
Next up: Missouri will host Mississippi State for the second leg of the home-and-home in less than 48 hours. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. on Sunday.
Quotable: “It was a tough day at the office." -- Ronnie DeGray
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