While we break down every play and dissect every bounce of the ball, Cuonzo Martin said after a 79-78 win over Arkansas, often times winning games is about “having just enough.” You never know which play is going to turn a game. And you never know which player might make that play.
In a game that Missouri led for more than 38 minutes, but had to hang on to win at the end, nobody made more big plays for the Tigers than redshirt junior walk-on Ronnie Suggs.
Mizzou had frittered away a good portion of a 14-point second half lead. With a little more than five minutes to go, the Razorbacks had drawn within 67-63, the closest they had been since the opening six minutes of the game. Suggs took a pass in the right corner and buried a three-pointer to give the Tigers a seven-point cushion and some momentary breathing room.
“If you’re open, coach wants you to shoot it,” Suggs said. “If you don’t shoot it, you’re not being aggressive enough so you’ve got to be ready to just take the moment in time.”
Two minutes later, the lead was just three. Suggs dribbled the ball into the lane and let go a floater that found the bottom of the net. Suggs, who was celebrating his 23rd birthday on Tuesday, had made just three field goals all season long before he hit two within a minute and 55 seconds of each other.
“You never know what can happen,” Suggs said. “I was open. I was supposed to hit those shots and that’s what I did.”
“Ronnie gonna always play hard. I call him the Energizer bunny cause at practice he never stops moving, he’s just always going hard,” Jeremiah Tilmon said. “We be like ‘Calm down, Ron.’ He always moving. Of course you can trust him when he’s always showing.”
Up next on Missouri’s night of unlikely heroes was the fanbase’s favorite punching bag of late. Kevin Puryear has struggled through a mostly disappointing senior season. He was shooting just 33% and averaging less than six points a game during SEC play. Puryear had scored eight points, grabbed eight rebounds and dished out three assists through the game’s first 38 minutes, but his biggest play was yet to come.
Puryear backed down his man as the shot clock crept toward zero. He had just one thought on his mind.
“I saw I had a smaller guy on me so I was like ‘Yeah, I’m scoring this,’” he said.
But just before he put up a shot, Arkansas big man Daniel Gafford stepped forward to challenge. That’s when Puryear lobbed a five-foot touch pass over the reach of Gafford to Jeremiah Tilmon. The Tiger center threw down a two-handed dunk to put Missouri up 78-74 with 1:12 to go.
Puryear’s best game in a while came on the heels of his head coach calling out Missouri’s power forwards after a loss to Texas A&M. Martin repeatedly pointed to Puryear, K.J. Santos and Mitchell Smith failing to take advantage of mismatches when they were defended by the Aggie guards.
“Which is why every time I had a mismatch I just really posted my butt off every time,” Puryear said. “Regardless of whether I’m going to get the ball or not, just exploit it and make it known that we have a mismatch. Because when we have mismatches, not only do I have a mismatch, somebody else has a mismatch as well.”
But for all the heroics and playing what Arkansas coach Mike Anderson called probably their best game of the year, the Tigers still didn’t have this one secured. Xavier Pinson committed an offensive foul on an inbounds play with 10.5 seconds to play and Missouri nursing a one-point lead.
“Jalen was real tricky with the foul. He kinda flopped, but it was cool,” Pinson said. “I didn’t think I did it until I seen it and I just like, ‘ahhhh.’”
At that point, Martin took Pinson out and put Suggs in.
“It was real tough cause I got subbed out,” Pinson said. “I was just like nervous. I was like, ‘if they get this, it’s on me.’”
“They ran the lob play, we felt like they would probably come back to that play,” Martin said. “So we took X out, put Ronnie on the ball.”
Missouri got exactly what it expected out of the Razorbacks. Jalen Harris dribbled to the free throw line. As they were instructed, Missouri switched, leaving Tilmon guarding Harris with Suggs giving up five inches against Gafford.
“At first, I was actually guarding the point guard, but coach was like ‘we’re gonna switch everything,’” Suggs said. “I don’t think we were expecting me to have to switch on to Gafford, but obviously I’m not going to back down from that. My objective was once we switched, just don’t let him touch the ball as best I can.”
Puryear was in the area to help if Arkansas tried to lob it to Gafford, but also had responsibility for a shooter that lurked in the corner. Harris tried to underhand a shot from the free throw line that came up two feet short. Suggs, boxing out Gafford, tipped the ball out for Tilmon to secure the rebound and a much-needed win for the Tigers.
“They weren’t expecting the switch, so he kind of flopped and threw the ball up,” Tilmon said. “I mean, luckily the ref didn’t call it. On film, it looked like it was kind of a foul, but they didn’t call it so it wasn’t no foul.”
Tilmon got a favorable whistle and Missouri held on to a late lead. May wonders never cease.
