The reactions were virtually identical. To a man, the Missouri Tigers shook their heads and laughed.
The question was about Jeremiah Tilmon. The only time anyone outside the team has seen him play, Missouri’s ultra-talented and ultra-aggressive freshman center fouled out against Kansas. In a game where players were allotted seven fouls apiece. Tilmon racked them up in 13 minutes.
“Geez,” Jordan Barnett said. “Okay, see, I didn’t know he only played 13 minutes. Dang…that’s…wow. That’s a foul every two minutes.”
“Like, dude how did you do that?” Kevin Puryear asked in awe. “How is that possible? Seven fouls in 13 minutes?”
But then Tilmon upped the ante. When asked about matching up with Wisconsin big man Ethan Happ in a closed scrimmage over the weekend, Tilmon says he was impressed with Happ’s game. And then: “I learned a lot from him. He fouled me out actually.”
Even Tilmon himself can’t help but smile here.
Cuonzo Martin chuckles softly: “You’re talking about a young man that competes, he plays hard, he battles, he’s physical.”
All jokes aside—and recognizing fully that it is only two games, neither of which count—there will come a point when this is not a laughing matter for Missouri.
“We’re all trying to help him stay in the game at times,” Barnett said. “Some of his issues have been with screening. He’ll set an illegal screen sometimes and I tend to be a recipient of those illegal screens so I’ll vocalize that sometimes in practice. It’s just a learning experience, he’s a freshman. If he does some of the things he’s been doing, it could potentially cost us.”
Tilmon is far from the only freshman who has had to go through some adjustments in learning to play the college game.
“Mike (Porter) had 21 points, he didn’t shoot a great percentage, but I know Mike and I know how he plays against us in practice and I’ve seen him play before,” senior guard Kassius Robertson said. “I know that’s not him. He said even after the game, ‘This is a different game.’ I told everybody ‘You guys are going to see.’ But you can’t really prepare them for that. They’ve got to see for themselves.”
They’ve seen. And Tilmon has heard. In the form of whistles. Twelve of them so far. It’s not a sound with which he’s unfamiliar.
“In high school I used to get a lot of fouls called on me too,” Tilmon said, once again drawing laughter from the reporters circling him. “I figured once I got to college it was going to be more one on one, I was going to be able to bang more, but it’s not that either.”
Martin said Missouri has been working with Tilmon daily to teach him what he can and can’t do. He seemed to question a couple of the calls in the Wisconsin scrimmage.
“To his credit, he plays at the same level and he’s a quick learner so I think he’ll make the adjustments,” Martin said. “We’re a different team when he’s not on the floor.”
Tilmon’s upside was clear in the exhibition against Kansas. He scored ten points in just 13 minutes. He banked home a turnaround jumper and had two thunderous dunks off of offensive rebounds. All this while getting his feet wet on the biggest pre-season stage in college basketball in front of nearly 19,000 fans.
“The crowd during warmpus, I kept looking up and I couldn’t calm down,” he said. “They’ve been playing longer than me and they can slow the game down and play. I’m really out there nervous, I’m rushing, doing all this and that’s how I picked up fouls.”
Assuming Tilmon can curb the foul issues—many of them have come on the offensive end, a few on illegal screens—he is part of a Missouri team that has far more size than recent editions. Martin said there have been times he has had three players on the floor who are 6-foot-10 or taller.
“We didn’t shoot great percentage against Wisconsin because we didn’t pound it inside. We want to go inside a lot more,” Robertson said. “Just shoot better shots. We have too many guys who can shoot the ball to shoot 30%.”
The size of Tilmon, Jontay Porter and others can open things up for the rest of the Tigers. Perhaps no one can benefit more than Kevin Puryear.
“We got some talented guys down low, guys taller than me,” the junior said. “I played a lot of five last year. I’m actually getting to play outside a little bit, play that four spot which I’m comfortable playing.”
“We have a little bit more size this year and (Puryear) can really shoot the ball. He’s been working hard since summer,” junior point guard Terrence Phillips said. “That’s a good thing for his game and that’s a good thing for this team. Our big thing is spacing and being able to attack gaps and find shooters.”
It’s certainly a work in progress. The pieces are there. Now Missouri just needs to keep them all on the floor.
“Hopefully I don’t have a season of just fouling,” Tilmon said. “Because I can’t help my team on the bench.”
