Dennis Gates held a zoom press conference with the media Friday leading into the start of SEC play at Auburn on Saturday.
Here are his quotes I found most telling.
When asked about forcing turnovers against Auburn
What Gates said: “That’s one of their strengths, they get shots before turnovers. The things that we can control, we will control. We don’t know when turnovers will take place, we’ve just got to put ourselves in the right position to at least make it a little more difficult.”
What went unsaid: Auburn is second in the country at just 8.8 turnovers per game, they are behind only South Alabama at 8.6. Mizzou is 25th in the country in turnovers forced per game at 16.0.
Missouri has forced teams to commit much higher amounts of turnovers than their averages coming in this season, look at kansas’ 10.2 per game now vs. the 22 the Tigers forced in the Border War, but Auburn is a different beast.
Auburn doesn’t make mistakes often, if Mizzou is going to pull off another upset against a team around the top of the AP rankings, it’s going to have to force a very disciplined team into playing very undisciplined at home in a tough environment.
When asked about playing in hostile environments
What Gates said: “I just think when you look at the Memphis game that second half, the first half, I thought we did a good job. Second half, I thought we didn’t execute how we needed to execute. When it comes down to both games (including Illinois), it gave us what we needed in terms of high-level competition.”
What went unsaid: Gates started this quote talking about how he counts the neutral-site Braggin’ Rights game as a hostile environment.
I do not.
There were certainly a lot of Illinois fans there and it was more hostile than a home game, but it’s not the same as going to Auburn this weekend or playing at Memphis to open the season. A true-road game is different.
And we’ve only seen Mizzou play one true-road game this season. The Tigers looked very good, and then very bad. But that’s kind of the reverse order of what you would expect.
Often a team will start slow because of the energy in the building against them, and then will adjust. The Tigers came out firing before falling off a cliff.
It’s hard to judge if the Tigers are ready to handle truly hostile environments yet, they did alright in the one opportunity they’ve had, but it’s also been two months since then. This is one where we’ll just have to wait and see.
When asked about playing fast against another team that likes to play fast.
What Gates said: The opportunities to shoot a higher field-goal percentage, or even behind the arc, and those percentages allow you to play a little bit more free and obviously with pace. What I do know is, they have depth and we have depth and what we don’t know is which players will be able to step up and answer the call. I think they have one of the best benches in the country as well and I think we do, too.”
What went unsaid: When it comes to bench points per game, Missouri is first at 41.3, Auburn is 30th at 31.69.
There’s some schedule discrepancy that can explain a lot of that, the Missouri bench got a whole lot of time against Mississippi Valley State and Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Caleb Grill scored 33 off the bench against Eastern Washington. The Auburn bench did not get a lot of time on the road at No. 4 Houston or in a two-point game against No.5 Iowa State or against No. 12 North Carolina or No. 9 Duke or No. 16 Purdue.
But even with an incredibly tough schedule, Auburn is still averaging 30+ points per game off the bench, like Gates said, that means a lot of depth.
Both teams like to play very fast, get points and transition and keep the ball moving. The benches are going to be very important tomorrow.
When asked about what the non-conference schedule helped Mizzou improve most.
What Gates said: “We’ve played against different styles, different coaches, and you know, not it’s just time to focus on the SEC. Focus on recovering from game-to-game. … The schedule has definitely prepared us. It gave us an opportunity to figure ourselves out, have identity.”
What went unsaid: It’s no secret the Tigers have played an easy schedule overall. But they’ve had four tough games against major opponents, three that are ahead of the Tigers in the NET rankings.
But the worst SEC team in the net rankings, South Carolina at No. 85, would be the fourth best team on the Tigers’ schedule to this point.
SEC play is going to be incredibly tough and Mizzou opens with about as tough of a test as you can have. We’re going to learn a lot about the Tigers in these first couple of conference games that we haven’t really had a chance to learn to this point.
But those cupcake games did give the Tigers a chance to really figure out their rotations and which of the young guys should get the most time (Marcus Allen and Peyton Marshall). So there were definite advantages.
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