With less than minute remaining before halftime, Missouri led No. 23 Iowa State by a point inside Hilton Coliseum. The Tigers had turned the ball over a whopping 12 times against the Cyclones' swarming defense, yet better than 50 percent shooting kept them in the game.
The 13th turnover turned out to be the backbreaker.
Missouri point guard Boogie Coleman, for once not harassed as he brought the ball up the floor, still failed to reach the mid-court line in 10 seconds. On its ensuing possession, Iowa State leading scorer Izaiah Brockington drove into the lane and drew a whistle on Missouri forward Ronnie DeGray III. Cuonzo Martin, perhaps still frustrated from Coleman's turnover, protested the foul call until he was whistled for a technical, just his second technical foul of the year.
The two coinciding fouls meant four free throws for Brockington, all of which he made. That gave Iowa State a lead it would never relinquish. The Cyclones found their shooting stroke in the second half and outscored Missouri 19-6 in the first 10 minutes to pull away. Iowa State ultimately cruised to a 67-50 victory.
"We didn’t play tough enough," Missouri guard DaJuan Gordon said, summing up the game. "They brought the grit and we didn’t match it."
The loss marked the third in a row and the fifth in the past six games for Missouri (8-12). Here are five things we learned from the game.
1. Turnovers killed the Missouri offense. Iowa State has been adept at taking the ball away from its opponents all season, entering Saturday ranked fifth nationally in defensive turnover rate. Thus, it was no surprise that the Cyclones feasted against a Missouri offense that has struggled with on-ball pressure all season due to its lack of a natural point gurad.
The Tigers turned the ball over 18 times, and that number likely would have been higher had Iowa State not called off its pressure with a double-digit lead for much of the second half. Missouri's giveaways led to 27 Cyclone points.
The turnovers came in various forms. Missouri gave the ball away on three shot clock violations, three offensive fouls and two 10 second violations. Six of the team's 10 players turned the ball over at least once.
Both Martin and Gordon said the common denominator was Missouri not being strong enough with the ball and making poor decisions.
"Being strong, being aggressive with the ball, making sound decisions, jump-stopping in the paint," Martin said of the causes for the turnovers. "I think that’s the next part in Boogie’s game. When he’s sped up, to be under control even when he’s sped up. Jump stop, make sound decisions, utilize his size in those areas, especially with smaller guards, and not get so sped up to where he’s off balance. I thought some of them, we were trying to make long passes instead of meeting the ball.”
As for Coleman's 10 second violation at the end of the first half, Martin said simply "that can't happen."
2. Missouri couldn't find an answer to Iowa State's run at the end of the first half.
After seizing momentum before the break, the Cyclones emerged from the locker room and knocked down 12 of their first 16 field goal attempts after halftime, including a stretch of eight makes in a row. A 15-0 run in the span of about five minutes effectively put the game out of reach.
Martin said several of those baskets, including a pair of Iowa State three-pointers on consecutive possessions, resulted from defensive breakdowns.
"There was a sequence there where they got two threes, I think it was a breakdown, a guy coming off the bench," he said. "And that can’t happen. That was an eight-point quick stretch there, and it can’t happen.”
After shooting just 10-29 from the field in the first half, including 1-10 from behind the three-point arc, Iowa State made 14-24 shots and 5-8 threes after the break. Gordon put the blame for the momentum shift squarely on his team's shoulders. It had been a few weeks since Missouri had fallen victim to a big run by an opponent, but he pointed out that has been a feature of quite a few of the team's losses this season.
“That’s something that this team, we have all struggled with the whole year," Gordon said. "We done went up on teams who were the best in the country, and we done lost the lead. It’s nothing with the opponent, it’s all within Mizzou. So that’s something that we all have to work on, we have to be able to maintain the lead once we get up.”
3. It seems like a long time ago that Kobe Brown went for 30 points against Alabama. Missouri needs him to be better.
For the fifth time in the past six games, Brown failed to reach double figures. He scored five points in 35 minutes against Iowa State, making one of eight field goal attempts.
While Martin acknowledged that the Cyclones, like virtually every Missouri opponent, made it a priority to slow down Brown, he said Brown needs to be better, especially when the opponent frequently switches on defense like Iowa State. Several times, Brown found himself matched up against a smaller defender but couldn't take advantage.
“I think simply said Kobe has to be better," Martin said. "Because, I mean, they had switches where there was point guards on Kobe, and he has to take advantage of those opportunities. He’s got to get to the rim, he’s got to make plays, he’s got to make quick moves, he’s got to get it off the glass, got to drive the ball. There’s two guys on the double, he’s got to find open guys."
This season has shown that, in order for Missouri to be successful, it needs its leading scorer to shoulder the offensive load. The Tigers are now 0-8 when Brown fails to reach 10 points.
"Kobe just has to be better," Martin reiterated. "It’s just that simple. Because we need him to be at that level. But 1-8, I think he’s a better talent than what his game showed tonight.”
4. The fact that Missouri was without Javon Pickett for most of the game didn't help, either.
Missouri's lone senior played just six minutes and didn't score. Pickett collided hard with Brockington in the first half, the two knocking heads. Later in the half, he re-entered the game, but he played just 1:09 before returning to the bench for the rest of the afternoon.
Martin didn't yet know a specific diagnosis for Pickett's injury when he spoke to reporters following the game, but he said Pickett got hit between the top of the head and the eye and that he was struggling to see.
"That’s all we know right now," Martin said. "I would imagine we’ll do more tests as we get back (to Columbia)."
Both Martin and Gordon said that losing Pickett hurt Missouri. Not only had Pickett served as the team's most consistent scorer of late, reaching double figures in six straight games prior to Saturday, but he brings leadership and toughness to the floor that Gordon said is contagious.
“Javon is one of the guys who just gets us all together and makes sure things are right," Gordon said. "... Just his grit and his leadership, it hurt us this game, with him being gone. But the next guy’s gotta step up.”
5. After the game, Martin was still mystified as to why he got called for a technical foul.
His outrage, he explained, was due to DeGray being called for a foul on a play when, in Martin's opinion, he jumped straight into the air and kept his arms perpendicular to the ground. Martin said the video board above the court showed a replay of the collision, and when he saw the play again, he told a nearby official "that's not a foul." When the official stared him down, according to Martin, he asked the other officials what he had said wrong. That's when he got whistled for the technical.
"I’m like, 'That’s not a foul,'" Martin said. "So I’m yelling, I’m actually watching the action. So he’s standing there, staring, because again, I don’t use cuss words. So I said to the other two officials, 'Ask him what I said to him. I’d like to know it myself.' And he gave me a technical foul like he was ready to give it to me. And I said to the other guys, 'Just ask him what I said, because I’m not sure what I said.' ... But maybe he was anxious or wanting to give me that. Because I didn’t do nothing I normally don’t do.”
Sometimes, a coach being whistled for a technical can have a galvanizing affect on his team. That wasn't the case for Missouri. The Tigers got out-scored 21-5 over the next nine minutes of game action.
Gordon, who blamed himself for the technical foul because he got beat on defense, forcing DeGray to rotate, lamented the fact that Missouri didn't respond to the technical foul with more intensity.
“Him getting a tech, that was my fault," Gordon said. "I got back-doored, which shouldn’t have happened, which led to that. So that was my fault. But he fought for us, and in the end we tried to fight, but we didn’t fight strong enough. So we owe coach. We gotta fight stronger for him.”
Star of the Game: Missouri would have been out of contention quite a bit sooner had it not been for Gordon. The Kansas State transfer scored the team's first seven points of the game and finished with 15, which tied his season high. He made two of the team's five three-pointers, while the rest of the roster combined to shoot 3-10 from behind the arc.
Room for Improvement: For much of the season, Missouri has been unable to get to the line as often as its opponents. Entering Saturday, the Tigers had attempted 62 fewer free throws than the opposition in 14 games against high-major competition. Even on the road, Missouri actually got to the line more than Iowa State — but it couldn't capitalize. The Tigers made nine of 18 free throws, including just five of 13 in the second half. In a game in which scoring was at a premium, those represented valuable missed opportunities.
What it means: Not many people would have expected Missouri to pull off an upset in Ames, but this represented a bit of a step backwards for the Tigers. It had been a while since the team lost a lopsided game, having led each of its three previous losses for more than 25 minutes. Saturday, Iowa State's run to start the second half, when Missouri simply had no answer, looked like something we would have seen a month ago.
Next up: Missouri will return home to face Florida on Wednesday. Tipoff is set for 8 p.m.
Quotable: “We weren’t tough enough with the ball, strong enough with the ball. They sent everything to the baseline and we were going baseline, and it just got us as a team looking there for each other. So we just needed to be together and be stronger with the ball. ... It was on us.” -- DaJuan Gordon
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