When discussing his offense this season, Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin has sounded like a broken record. Attack North to South, he always says, and get shots around the basket.
During Friday's SEC Tournament semifinal against Arkansas, Missouri had little trouble getting the ball to the hoop. The issues arose once they got there. Missouri struggled to get center Jeremiah Tilmon going, It missed more layups than it made and it got whistled for charge after charge after charge. In a game that featured 45 fouls, a whopping 15 of them came on the offensive end. Ten of those were called against Missouri.
"I mean, they called it both ways," Martin said of the offensive fouls. "Man, I've never seen that many of them in a game."
The 70-64 loss knocks Missouri out of the SEC Tournament, meaning the Tigers will enter the NCAA Tournament with a record of 16-9. The team will find out its seeding and matchup for the Big Dance on Sunday.
Here is our full report on the game, including what we learned.
* Tilmon's exit to the game was downright poetic. With 5:26 to play in the game, he jostled for position down low and got called for, yep, an offensive foul. The whistle marked his fourth foul during a scoreless second half and sent him to the bench, where he joined fellow big Mitchell Smith, who had already fouled it. It marked the second offensive foul on Tilmon and ninth for the team.
The constant charge calls not only contributed to Missouri being shorthanded down low, they played a role in the Tiger offense bogging down. Missouri's shooting numbers weren't terrible — 22-52 from the field, 6-18 from three-point range — but the Tigers mustered just 64 points on 73 possessions largely due to 21 turnovers. As mentioned above, nearly half of those came on offensive fouls.
While Missouri's players often appeared frustrated by the calls, both Dru Smith and Xavier Pinson said they needed to do a better job adjusting once it became clear how the game was being officiated.
“I think we just have to do a better job of making adjustments to how the game is being called," Smith said. "Understanding that, like, we saw that they were calling a lot of charges, and so just understanding that we have to be able to make that adjustment and still continue to play our brand of basketball.”
The mounting fouls played a bit part in Arkansas pulling away late in the second half. Eleven of the Razorbacks' 15 made free throws came during the second half. The Tigers, meanwhile, had to finish the game without their two primary options at center.
"It’s a key loss," Martin said of losing Tilmon and Mitchell Smith. "You’re talking about two guys we count on.”
* Even on the occasions when Missouri didn't get called for a charge, the Tiger offense generally struggled to convert touches around the basket into points. Missouri shot just 9-23 on layups during the game. Dru Smith credited Arkansas' active defense, but he and Martin both said that indicated a lack of concentration on the part of the Tiger players.
"It’s just a matter of finishing at the rim," Martin said. "Those are layups. There's traffic, there's bodies, there's hands. It’s just finishing at the rim. Concentration more than anything.”
Martin also said his team didn't get enough from Tilmon, who dominated Arkansas during Missouri's win in Fayetteville, when he posted 25 points and 11 rebounds. Tilmon actually started Friday's game strong, scoring nine points in the first half and eclipsing 1,000 points for his career. He routinely scored over Arkansas' 7-foot-3 center Connor Vanover on one end and frustrated him with his defense on the other, to the point that Razorback coach Eric Mussleman benched Vanover for the final 28 minutes of the game, even though backup big man Jaylin Williams wasn't available.
With Arkansas going small, Tilmon should have had an advantage. Yet he never scored in the second half. He recorded zero points, zero rebounds (he didn't have a board all game), four fouls and two turnovers after halftime.
While the fouls clearly played a part in disrupting Tilmon's rhythm, Martin was adamant that can't happen.
"We need to probably get more out of Tilmon when they’re small, because we feel like that’s an advantage for us," Martin said. "We didn’t win that battle. So if they want to go small, let’s make them pay, and I didn’t think he had one of his better games."
Pinson said the blame doesn't just fall on Tilmon for not taking advantage of his size mismatch, but the rest of the team for not doing a better job of getting him the ball in good position.
"I mean, it might get annoying throwing the ball into Tilly, but seriously, every time, I feel like whenever any team goes small and Tilly is in the game, I feel like we have to, just 100 percent have to get him the ball, no matter what," Pinson said. "And then we gotta play through him. Because if they don’t double, that’s a bucket. If they do double, then he’s getting someone else open."
* On the defensive end of the floor, Missouri succeeded in frustrating Arkansas leading scorer Moses Moody. The Tigers matched up Dru Smith with the SEC Freshman of the Year, who entered postseason play averaging 17.5 points per game. Moody scored just five points on 2-6 shooting Friday.
One of his teammates, however, more than picked up the slack. Sixth-man JD Notae scored 12 points during a 16-0 Arkansas run in the first half, which more than erased an early 10-point Missouri lead. Notae's scoring spree included a pair of three-pointers from the edge of the half-court logo.
Even momentarily leaving the game to vomit in a trash can in the tunnel couldn't slow Notae down. Notae, who scored just two points In 13 minutes during the last meeting between Missouri and Arkansas, answered a Pinson three-pointer with a three of his own as the clock ticked under four minutes to play. Then, with the Tigers trailing by three points and just more than a minute left, Notae grabbed a loose ball, tossed up a wild, falling shot and watched it rattle through the rim.
"He’s a confident scorer," Martin said of Notae. "I don’t think he’s scored it that well lately, but you knew it was coming at some point, because he’s an aggressive scorer, and if his shot is falling, as you see, they went through him and he made plays. I think it was a three-point game right there and it was a loose ball, he got it, put it up — that was a tough one right there."
* One bright spot for Missouri was the play of backup big man Parker Braun, who almost singlehandedly got the team back into the game in the final minutes. Braun didn't see the floor until Tilmon fouled out, but he stepped seamlessly into the action, making a pair of free throws and a three-pointer on the offensive end of the court and making some timely rotations on defense.
Martin was pleased with the play of the redshirt sophomore. Having another post option could benefit the Tigers during the postseason, especially after Mitchell Smith combined to record two points, seven rebounds and seven fouls across the team's two games in the SEC Tournament.
"I was proud to see Parker game ready, came in and played major minutes for us," Martin said. "But again, he’s that type of player."
* Speaking to reporters just a few minutes after the final buzzer sounded, Missouri's players weren't quite ready to shift their focus forward. Pinson said he was "pissed off at this loss."
But despite Friday's result, Missouri should be safely in the NCAA Tournament field for just the second time in the past eight years. Martin revealed that the team will travel straight from Nashville to Indianapolis, where the entire tournament will be held. He said Selection Sunday always brings "a new energy" to teams.
"These are exciting times," Martin said. "Once you hear your name getting called, you find out who you’re playing, it’s just new energy. It’s always new energy. I mean, you’ve seen teams, five, six, seven, eight seeds, all of a sudden make a great run. ... I think you’re able to get rid of a lot of things that you might have thought negative, I want to change or do better, because it’s a new season. The energy is exciting, and it’s truly one and done. It’s truly one and done. It’s like, you gotta win, if you don’t you go home."
Martin said Missouri would likely take a day or two off of practicing, then start preparing for its first-round opponent. At this point in the season, he said, the focus won't be so much changing the things Missouri does, but simply trying to best tailor the game plan for whoever the Tigers face first.
The biggest challenge might be simply making sure the team gets to that first-round game. Friday saw two likely NCAA Tournament-bound teams, Virginia and Kansas, withdraw from their respective conference tournaments due to positive COVID-19 tests, which could jeopardize their postseason status moving forward. NCAA Tournament protocols stipulate that players must test negative seven days consecutively in order to participate in the Big Dance, meaning any positive tests next week would sideline that person, and any others placed in quarantine due to contact tracing, for the first round.
"We always say, stay out of harm’s way, don’t put yourself in position, don’t do anything to jeopardize not just you but your teammates," Martin said. "And we try to do the best job we can. I think our guys have done a great job in trying to prepare for the unknown, and we took our COVID test, we’ve been good thus far. But again, you never know, You just gotta put yourself in position to do the right things.”
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: Friday's loss shown a spotlight on Missouri's lack of depth. Arkansas didn't have one regular contributor available, it benched a starter for most of the game and it didn't get much scoring from Moody. Yet players like Notae, Devontae Davis and Justin Smith stepped up and all scored in double-figures. The only players to reach that mark for the Tigers were Pinson and Dru Smith. Mark Smith, in particular, had a rough outing. He recorded seven points and nine rebounds but shot just 3-13 from the field and missed all four of his three-pointers.
STAR OF THE GAME: Pinson struggled for about the last month of the regular season, but he took another step in the right direction Friday. He scored a team-high 14 points. While he did turn the ball over four times, two of which came on offensive fouls, Pinson also dished a pair of assists, and Martin complimented his aggressiveness.
"I thought he was getting downhill, making plays, putting pressure on the defense," Martin said. "I thought he did a good job.”
Pinson played just 25 minutes, in part because he took a hard spill after jumping for a rebound in the second half, but he said after the game that he feels alright and should be good to go for the start of the NCAA Tournament.
WHAT IT MEANS: Missouri has still never advanced to the semifinals of the SEC Tournament, which seems almost difficult to believe. While it might be tough to stomach a postseason loss, especially in the rubber match against a rival, this result shouldn't negatively impact the Tigers' postseason resume. As long as they can stay healthy, the Tigers are going dancing.
QUOTABLE: “I’m pissed off at this loss, so the next couple days I’m going to just I guess work on whatever I could, watch film, work out, do whatever I can to get better. Get some ice, of course. … Honestly these guys have worked so hard, we all have worked so hard, so I feel like we just got to shake this one off and look at what’s bigger, and that’s the national tournament.” -- Xavier Pinson
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