A momentary panic settled over the crowd at Mizzou Arena Friday night. The game wouldn't count toward the Tigers' record, but in their first public action of the 2019-20 season, the team entered the locker room at halftime trailing Central Missouri 32-31. The Mules had shot 50% from behind the three point line and bullied the Tigers inside, out rebounding Missouri 19-13. Nearly of third of their 32 points had come off the Tigers’ 11 turnovers.
This wasn’t how Missouri’s first and only preseason exhibition was supposed to go.
But, the fact of the matter Friday night was that this was the Missouri Tigers of the SEC taking on Division II Central Missouri, and just as quickly as that halftime panic set in, sophomore guard Javon Pickett erased it with three-point play and an emphatic slam to fuel a 7-0 run in the second half’s opening minutes, restoring order in the process. Missouri eventually pulled away for an 80-56 win.
“I think the biggest thing in the second half thing was just being aggressive. Being assertive,” head coach Cuonzo Martin said postgame. “We went into an attack mode. We were a lot more aggressive and it opened things up for us.”
It was a tale of two halves as the Tigers stormed past Central Missouri to win 80-56 in their lone preseason tune up before the regular season kicks off Wednesday against Incarnate Word. After trailing at the break, Missouri used Pickett’s second half jolt as a catapult and rode it to a double-digit victory.
Freshman Kobe Brown led all scorers with 12 points while Dru Smith, making his Missouri debut after a year on the bench following his transfer from Evansville, filled the stat sheet with seven assists and six steals to go with eight points. Battling foul trouble all night, Jeremiah Tilmon finished 5-5 from the foul line for nine points and three rebounds.
Missouri’s other freshman, St. Louis guard Mario McKinney and four-star forward Tray Jackson, made their first appearances for the Tigers, as well.
McKinney didn’t enter the game until three and a half minutes into the second half and kicked off his Missouri career with an off-balance jumper that found nothing but air, but recovered with a pair of fourth quarter lay ups and two points at the line to finish with six points, two rebounds and an assist in 12 minutes. Jackson picked up seven points of his own to go with four rebounds, two assists and a block.
The story of the night for the Tigers was Smith, their 6-foot-3 transfer guard. Martin and the rest of the Tigers have touted him as an all-around, big impact player since he arrived to Columbia, and Smith wasted no time putting it on display Friday.
Guiding Missouri’s offense next to Xavier Pinson, who finished with just two points in 11 minutes, Smith flashed his abilities as a passer with an entry pass to Brown for a lay in the opening minutes before teaming up with Pinson for a give and go that ended with a tomahawk jam for the second point guard. On the other end, Smith terrorized Central Missouri’s guards, picking up four of his six steals in the first half.
Most impressive, Smith left his vast imprint on the evening with just six field goal attempts. That’s something Smith says he prides himself on and something Missouri can expect from him all season long.
“That’s a big part of my game,” Smith said. “I’m not a volume guy by any means. There’s not going to be very many games where you see me take a lot of shots. I’m just trying to get guys involved, trying to hit them when they’re open. I just want to have an impact on the game whether it’s offensively or defensively.”
Yet as the first half delivered bright spots such as Smith’s performance, Brown’s offensive confidence and scoring from Pickett and Torrence Watson, who each finished with 11 points, it was an ugly opening period for the Tigers.
First game jitters, effective spacing and movement from the Mules or just plain getting outplayed, whatever it was, had the Tigers on their heels. With Tilmon on the bench for more than half of the first half, Central Missouri cleaned up on the glass and forward Matt Wilkinson, who was later given a warning for flopping, torched the Tigers with three 3-pointers. And when Smith wasn’t handling the ball, Missouri’s offense became shaky and no stretch reflected that more than the nearly four minutes the Tigers went without scoring.
"When you’re playing on your heels defensively, it’s hard to get into a flow,” Martin said.
Things changed with Pickett’s run to start the second half. His transition jam reset the tone at Mizzou Arena thrust the Tigers back on top. After getting run all over in the first half, Missouri held the Mules to just 24 points after the break. It was a return to normalcy.
Missouri’s second half effort was made even more impressive by the fact that it was done in large part without Tilmon. The Mules didn’t have a single player on its roster to match the junior center’s size, but Tilmon’s habitual issues with foul trouble returned with three of his four fouls coming on the offensive end.
“It was me just going back to my old ways,” Tilmon said. “I was moving my arms a little bit too much. I’ve been working on keeping my arms like field goal uprights. Keeping my arms up and moving side to side. But there’s times you move your arms around without even knowing it. It happens.”
After an offseason focused on his continued effort to remain disciplined, TIlmon was disappointed with the result Friday. His ability to stay on the floor will play a major role in determining Missouri’s ceiling this season.
It wasn’t a perfect showing for the Tigers Friday, far from it in fact. But the performances they got from Smith, Brown and the rest of the cast, and the overall performance Missouri turned in during the game’s second half give reason for optimism around Martin’s new look team.
Next up, the Tigers will begin the regular season at home against Incarnate Word on Wednesday.