Post-Game Report: Mizzou cruises to win behind Jeremiah Tilmon, Mark Smith
In its matchup at Texas A&M on Saturday, Missouri started slow. It took nearly 10 minutes for the Tigers to reach 10 points, and they trailed by seven with four minutes to play in the first half.
Tuesday's game against South Carolina couldn't have started any differently. Before Missouri missed a shot, it led 10-0, forcing a South Carolina timeout just over three minutes into the game. The Tigers never relinquished the lead, cruising to a 81-70 victory. Below is our full report on the win, starting with five things we learned.
* It never hurts to start the game on a 10-0 run, but doing so against South Carolina might have been especially important. For one, the Gamecocks have been through a lot in recent weeks. They've paused team activities three times due to COVID-19 positives, canceling seven total games. They played a night game on the road Saturday (without head coach Frank Martin on the sidelines) before hitting the road again for this matchup. South Carolina didn't look sharp early, missing each of its first five shots and turning the ball over twice in the first three minutes, and Missouri took advantage.
Head coach Cuonzo Martin also said that South Carolina is the type of team that you have to attack, and the fact that Missouri was able to land its opening salvo gave his team confidence it could continue to attack the basket with success. Each of Missouri's first five field goals came in the paint, with two being dunks. As Martin said, when players see the ball go through the basket early, it tends to energize them on both ends of the floor.
"The way they play, if you go east and west, it’ll be a long night for you," Martin said. "You’ve got to attack downhill against these guys. They’re so physical, they switch out high, they’ll have you passive. You gotta get downhill and force the referees to make calls."
The last time Missouri grabbed a double-digit first-half lead, it blew the game in epic fashion, losing by 15 to Mississippi State two weeks ago. But this time, the Tigers were able to keep South Carolina at arm's length for the duration of the contest. The Gamecocks briefly cut Missouri's lead to five, but the Tigers scored five quick points to extend it to double-digits, ultimately taking an 11-point lead into the locker room at halftime. In the second half, South Carolina never got within 10 points, and Missouri led by as many as 18.
* For the second time in the past two-and-a-half weeks, Martin said this was the best game he's ever seen from Jeremiah Tilmon. The senior has finally turned his flashes into consistent production, and he terrorized South Carolina down low. Despite being frequently double-teamed and occasionally tripled, Tilmon scored 19 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, logging his fourth double-double in the past six games.
"It used to be, three straight years, somebody would double him, the first thing he’d do, he dribbles out and away from the rim to avoid the double," Martin said. "Now you see him, he put his chest at the rim and he’s aggressive and he’s strong with the ball. And that’s hard to guard."
Tilmon's scoring ability in the post opened up the rest of the offense for Missouri by creating open perimeter shots or lanes for other players to drive or cut. Martin said he's always envisioned running an offense with Tilmon as its lynchpin. With Tilmon averaging 16.6 points (on 73.3 percent shooting), 8.2 rebounds and 29.8 minutes per game during conference play, that has finally become a consistent reality.
"How he’s playing right now, I feel like a lot of teams are going to double-team him, so it opens up a lot of things for us, open shots, driving lanes, things like that," Mark Smith said. "So it’s a lot of fun playing with him right now.”
It wasn't just Tilmon's offense that drew Martin's praise, either. With South Carolina frequently utilizing lineups of five perimeter players, Tilmon was out of his defensive comfort zone, unable to simply protect the rim. Yet he tied his career-high with three blocks for the second game in a row and also recorded three steals. Most important, he played 32 minutes and recorded three fouls.
“The previous years, ... I felt like I was playing hard," Tilmon said. "My biggest thing was just staying on the court and, like I say, just being mentally strong and having that stigma on me for the fouls. This year, I just feel like I’ve relaxed and just been playing my game.”
* It had gotten to the point where it was fair to question whether Mark Smith's recent stretch could be qualified as a slump, or whether his first four games of the season represented an aberration from the norm. Smith started this season hot. He averaged 17.3 points per game across Missouri's first four contests while shooting 52 percent from three-point range. Then, Smith's shooting stroke didn't just go cold, he struggled to find any part of his offensive game. In Missouri's past six games prior to Tuesday, Smith averaged just 6.8 points per game while shooting 28 percent from behind the arc. He recorded 17 turnovers during that span versus four assists.
But against South Carolina, Smith finally looked once again like the player who earned SEC player of the week honors earlier this season. He knocked down three three-pointers and scored 15 points in the first half, 18 overall.
"You have to be ready to shoot the ball, and I thought he was ready to shoot the ball tonight," Martin said of Smith. "And I thought he was ready to shoot the last game, it just didn’t go in. But he was ready to shoot it tonight."
Smith actually got his scoring started with a few makes inside the arc, both from running the floor in transition and driving from the perimeter. His first three came when he curled off a screen out of a timeout, caught an inbounds pass and drilled a deep shot. While Smith said he never lost confidence in his shot, seeing that first one go in Tuesday gave him a jolt of confidence.
“It definitely felt good to see that first one go through," Smith said, "and then I wasn’t really worried about anything after that. Coach had been telling me, when I’m open, shoot it, so I felt like they were open shots, the ones I was shooting, and they were going in.”
Tuesday illustrated the importance of a productive Smith to Missouri's offense. He knocked down three of the team's five three-pointers on the night. As a result, Missouri shot 38.5 percent from behind the arc, its second-highest percentage of the season.
"It opens up the floor a lot, because if he’s making shots, then I’m getting double-teamed and it’s easy to just kick the ball out," Tilmon said. "You can’t leave him open. If you don’t get a hand in his face and he’s already hot, it’s lights out.”
* Even though South Carolina had only played six games prior to Tuesday due to several bouts with COVID-19, the Gamecocks' game plan was pretty clear. They wanted to get out and run.
For the most part, Missouri beat South Carolina at its own game. The Tigers looked to push the pace whenever possible, even at times after made baskets. Particularly early in the game, they caught the Gamecocks unaware and took advantage. Missouri finished the game with 20 fast-break points compared to just seven for South Carolina. Fifteen of those came in the first half.
Martin's teams have rarely embraced at such a pace at Missouri, but he said playing fast has been an emphasis for the Tigers since the start of offseason practices.
"You know, it’s crazy, when I go back and watch film of last year when we played opponents, ... we played so slow, it’s like, man, why did I coach that? Because I wouldn’t want to watch that," Martin chuckled. "I hope no fans heard that. But, you know what I mean, you want to get up and down and play, you want to have some excitement, and the key is you have to continue to grow in that role and how you play that way, that pace you play, but you got to still be tough defensively to get stops, and you have to try to play on both ends and play hard. Now you might not hold teams to 50 points and all that, but you got to still be tough and do the things you do to win the game. But I like playing this way, I want our guys to get out in transition. We got to continue to cut down the careless turnovers, but I like the way we play.”
* Of course, just as important as Missouri taking advantage of transition scoring opportunities was preventing South Carolina from doing the same. Martin was pleased with his team's defensive effort against the Gamecock guards both in the half-court and transition. AJ Lawson and Jermaine Couisnard, South Carolina's two leading scorers who entered Tuesday averaging a combined 31 points per game, scored just 11 against Missouri.
Mark Smith attributed the Tigers' success containing the two slashing guards to adhering to the scouting report. Martin also credited the team's help defense.
"You have one on one assignments, but more than that, it’s just the team defense," Martin said. "So when those guys have the ball, you have to have all eyes on those guys to make tough plays, tough decisions, to make them take tough pull-ups, pitch the ball to other guys. You don’t want those guys getting clean looks. ... Just chest to chest, keep them in front of you and make them take tough shots.”
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: The one area in which Martin voiced displeasure after the game was Missouri's defensive rebounding. South Carolina, which entered Saturday ranked among the top 25 nationally in offensive rebounding rate, grabbed 20 offensive boards and turned them into 16 second-chance points. The Gamecocks' offensive rebounding rate of 41.7 percent is the highest surrendered by Missouri this season.
"They’re relentless, keeping balls high, and (Keyshawn) Bryant is one of the best I’ve seen at his size of slashing and getting offensive rebounds," Martin said. "But we have to be better.”
STAR OF THE GAME: For the third time in the past five games, Tilmon is our pick here. The big man is not only putting up huge numbers, he's doing so as the focal point of opposing defenses. South Carolina routinely double-teamed Tilmon on Tuesday, even throwing three defenders at him a couple times. No matter. Tilmon still found ways to put his stamp on almost every possession, whether it was by running the floor, rebounding, passing out of the double-team (he had two assists) or on the defensive end (he had three steals and three blocks). Martin took a moment to reflect on Tilmon's growth over the past four years.
"Some guys, the opponent is the competition," he said. "I think Jeremiah’s opponent is Jeremiah. And I say that with all due respect and grace. It’s just a matter of him understanding who he is as a player, his talent level, his physicality. And then the other part is the wisdom over the course of almost four years now completed, and the bumps in the road, the journey, the pain, the struggles, the ups and downs, the highs and lows. He’s learned from those lessons. He’s embraced it, and sometimes you don’t want to look in the mirror at some of those things to help you get better, but he’s embraced that, and now you’re starting to see results of a talented big man.”
WHAT IT MEANS: You have to hold serve at home and take advantage of the winnable games in order to contend in the SEC. Missouri did just that with a wire-to-wire victory. Now, the Tigers should enter a challenging stretch with the most momentum they've had since the calendar flipped to 2021. Crazy, but true: This is the first time Missouri has had a winning SEC record since the team ended SEC play 10-8 in 2017-18, Martin's first season.
QUOTABLE: “I really be focusing on the rebounds. I don’t really be caring about the points. I mean, everybody wants to score, but I be really out there just trying to get 10 rebounds. Like that’s something we all just say before going out, and I just be trying to reach that goal every time, and I’m just going to always play hard and just try to be at the right place at the right time and never force nothing when it comes to the offense.” -- Jeremiah Tilmon
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