Throughout the first half of Missouri's matchup against Kansas City, the home crowd seemed to wait for the home team to flip the switch — some spark to ignite the offense and start a run that would put the Tigers in control.
It waited, and waited, and waited. By the time the Tigers found any semblance of scoring, their deficit had become too deep to overcome.
For the first 29 minutes of Monday's matchup, Missouri looked like the Summit League squad paid to provide an early-season tune up for a high-major opponent. Facing an opponent that allowed Iowa and Minnesota to score an average of 80 points during its first two games of the season, the Tigers mustered just 34 points in that span. By that point, the Roos had built a 22-point lead.
Missouri would make a mini-run to trim the deficit to 14, but then the defense faltered. Kansas City made 15 of its final 20 field goal attempts. The Roos cruised to an 80-66 win.
"All of a sudden we were just playing catch up the whole time," Cuonzo Martin said after the game. "They’d make a couple shots, then they have our defense spread out. I think it just started to spiral from there.”
The defeat is Missouri's second home loss to Kansas City in the teams’ past two meetings. It marked the second loss to a low-major opponent during Martin's head coaching tenure and most lopsided loss to a team from outside the Power Five conferences, Big East or AAC since a 15-point defeat to Davidson in 2016. Prior to that, the last time the Tigers lost to a low-major team by more than 10 points was a 24-point defeat at the hands of Creighton in 2004.
Here are five things we learned from the loss.
1. It wasn't just that Missouri lost a guarantee game. That does happen to a few high-major teams every season. But the Tigers got blown off their home court.
UMKC came out ahead in every major statistical category: field goal percentage, three-point percentage, free throw percentage, rebounds, assists and turnovers. The Roos led for nearly 38 minutes. Guard Evan Gilyard II was the clear-cut best player on the floor. He scored 28 points on 10-15 shooting, making six of eight attempts from behind the arc. A UMKC offense that had averaged 56.5 points through its first two games scored 80.
Martin said after the game that he didn't feel like his team overlooked Kansas City or took it lightly. He attributed the result to a lack of execution on both ends of the floor. His hope after the game was that this would serve as a painful lesson to his new-look team about what happens when that occurs.
"This is a case of showing you when we don't execute the way we need to execute, this the result of it," he said. "And I don’t think our guys took them for granted in any way, shape or form. But we didn’t play at the level we’re capable of playing at.”
2. Missouri's half-court offense needs to improve in a hurry. The Tigers started the game 14-36 from the floor and 1-10 from three-point range. The final stat line doesn't look a whole lot better, as Missouri finished 24-51 from the field and 4-14 from behind the arc.
Martin attributed the offensive woes to players settling for jump shots and standing around the perimeter rather than driving or cutting toward the basket. Players held the ball too long, he said, and the team didn't utilize enough ball screens. Senior Javon Pickett called the offense "stagnant."
"We kind of were stagnant the whole game," Pickett said. "In the second half we started to move the ball a little bit more. Coach told us to cut, so we started doing those things. The floor started to open up."
Losing point guard Boogie Coleman early in the second half didn't help matters. Coleman limped off the floor after appearing to roll his ankle with 17:05 to play. He did not return, and Martin didn't yet have an update on his status when he met with the media after the game.
3. Martin would have liked to see his team combat its struggles on the offensive end by creating more opportunities in transition, but Kansas City rarely allowed the Tigers to get fast break opportunities. Missouri scored just five points in transition. Martin, who stressed his desire to play fast at virtually every public speaking opportunity during the offseason, said the team's wings didn't do a good enough job of getting down the floor.
"You gotta get out and go," he said. "What I watched from the sidelines — and I'll see it clearly on film — I don't think our wings sprinted to the corner. So I thought we settled high on the perimeter. So I thought often times our guys had opportunities to post up, and I think they settled for the post. You had two guys posting up, because those opportunities are there, but you’ve got to get to the baseline, allow the ball to move.”
Missouri also couldn't turn its frequent misses into second-chance points. The Tigers only grabbed six offensive rebounds, which resulted in just three additional points. Kansas City out-rebounded Missouri 32-30 overall.
"It just comes down to having grit," Pickett said of the rebounding. "We just got to hit somebody and go get a rebound."
4. The defense wasn't particularly good, either, especially on the perimeter. Kansas City knocked down 11 of 23 three-point attempts. That's more threes than the Roos made against a Divison I opponent all of last season and more than Missouri allowed any opponent to make a year ago.
Gilyard, in particular, gave the Tiger defense fits. Martin was disappointed with his team's inability to force the left-handed Gilyard to go to his right, which he said was a major emphasis on the scouting report.
"You’ve got to make him work for it," Martin said. "... When he’s 90 percent operating with his left hand, something we talked about, I mean — and like I tell our guys, I don’t have enough timeouts on the sideline to stop it. But you can’t allow a guy to play with comfort. He played with comfort the whole night.”
Gilyard wasn't the only Kansas City guard to hurt the Tigers. Marvin Nesbitt Jr. scored 20 points and Anderson Kopp chipped in 12. This marks the second time in as many games this year that Missouri has struggled to slow down an opposing backcourt. Central Michigan's Jermaine Jackson Jr. put up 19 in the Tigers' season-opener.
Much like the rebounding, Martin said improving the perimeter defense simply boils down to pride.
“I think it’s pride," he said. "I just think it’s personal pride. And those are the things we talk about in practice: individual pride in guarding the ball. One-on-one defense, you have to take pride in it."
5. Kobe Brown looks like Missouri's only effective interior option — but he has to do a better job of staying on the floor. For the second game in a row, Brown picked up four fouls and saw his playing time limited due to foul trouble. He sat for the final 11 minutes of the first half with a pair of fouls, neither of which came while playing defense.
Martin said he didn't consider inserting Brown back into the game until after the break, even though fellow forward Ronnie DeGray III returned after picking up his second foul. Martin said he "felt like down the stretch we would need (Brown)." Kansas City stretched its lead from two points to nine while Brown sat.
Brown showed what he could do in the second half, scoring 16 of his 20 points. Martin said Brown's foul trouble was "a factor" in the loss, but he was more disappointed in the lack of production around Brown than he was in Brown for drawing four whistles.
"I think more than that, other guys can step up and do some good things, and they didn't do it at the level we expect them to do it," Martin said. "As far as dribble penetration, we have multiple guys that can dribble penetrate and make plays. We have guys that can make shots. But again, I thought we settled on the perimeter."
Star of the Game: Missouri certainly could have done a better job defending Gilyard, keeping him from driving left. But he also deserves props for knocking down some high degree-of-difficulty shots. In the second half, Gilyard made nine of 11 shots and scored 25 points. At one point, he scored 13 straight Kansas City points.
Room for Improvement: There's a lot to choose from. But Martin spent the most time after the game harping on his team's self-inflicted mistakes: turnovers and missed free throws. Missouri turned the ball over 18 times and missed 10 of 24 free throw attempts.
Martin once again chalked up some of the turnovers to his team settling on the perimeter and throwing lazy passes. He also expressed disappointment with the lack of jump-stops. Five of Missouri's turnovers resulted from offensive fouls.
"We didn’t jump-stop," Martin said. "(We were) just kind of flipping the ball. ... And we spend hours on jump stop drills in the lane. I think we might have had three or four charges. It’s just simple execution."
What it means: This Missouri team will now face a major uphill climb to generate any sort of momentum around its season. Most fans don't start showing up to the arena until after football season concludes. After Monday night's performance, it wouldn't come as a surprise if many of them never materialize. The expectations for this season have to be recalibrated, as well. There's no way to realistically talk about an NCAA Tournament berth, and there is no floor for this season. If Missouri can't make compete against Kansas City, there are no sure wins on the schedule, outside of maybe NAIA Paul Quinn College.
Next up: Missouri hosts Northern Illinois on Thursday. The Huskies upset Washington in their season-opener before losing to Indiana by 36 points. Tipoff is scheduled for 7 p.m.
Quotable: “It’s a painful lesson. You’ve got to understand it, go through it, watch the film on it. Because I think our guys will see. It always starts with me as a coach, and I think our guys will see the effort with which we did not operate with, and that’s one of the things I think we take pride in, because we didn’t have it consistently." -- Cuonzo Martin
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