Tigers, Anderson live another day
NASHVILLE--With five minutes and 41 seconds to go, it was over. Missouri's game against Auburn, yes. But more than that. A season. A career. It was all over.
Terrence Phillips was whistled for his fifth foul. He protested briefly, then headed to the bench. While T.J. Dunans sank both free throws to give Auburn the biggest lead of the game for either team at 70-61, Phillips embraced Kim Anderson, the coach who brought him to Mizzou two years ago and who Missouri announced on Sunday would not return for next season.
"Just told me he loved me and, you know, a bunch of these guys have been that way," Anderson said. "It was a lot of emotion in all this."
"We said we loved each other," Phillips said. "At that moment, we didn't know what was going to happen."
Neither did anyone else in Bridgestone Arena.
"When Terrence came out with his fouls, I said 'we're not done yet,'" Cullen VanLeer said after a career-high 16 points. "We don't need to be doing that."
VanLeer was right. The Tigers would fight all the way back to tie the game and force overtime. In that extra period, they would score the final five points, including a buzzer-beating three-pointer from Kevin Puryear to give Mizzou an 86-83 win to which the word improbable does not do justice.
Missouri will live to fight another day at the SEC Tournament. And we'll get to that. But the process of just how they did it deserves more verbage.
In the next 5:15 after Phillips fouled out, Mizzou managed to cut only three points off the Auburn lead. It trailed 78-72 with 26 seconds to go. VanLeer hit a three, his fifth of the night, with 17 seconds to play and Anderson immediately called a timeout.
"Shots were just falling tonight," VanLeer said.
Auburn inbounded the ball after the timeout. Missouri did not immediately foul. Instead, Jared Harper dribbled a couple of times and neared halfcourt. Jordan Geist hit the floor. A whistle. Offensive foul. Missouri basketball.
"We were just trying to get a foul and hoping that he misses two and we get that," Geist said. "We were gonna try to get a steal or maybe get a turnover somehow, but after that we were gonna foul."
Missouri ran another play for VanLeer, who had at that point hit five of his six three-point attempts. The shot from the right wing caromed off the iron. Kevin Puryear rose in the lane to grab the rebound with just more than four seconds to play.
"I didn't get boxed out and the ball was just in the air," Puryear said. "I went up and grabbed it and turned to my left and Frankie (Hughes) was right there wide open."
Hughes, a freshman, stood in the left corner and took the pass. He had been a 26.5% three-point shooter during the regular season. He initially did not return from winter break and considered transferring as his high school teammate, Willie Jackson, did. Playing time has been sparse for Hughes since then. In conference play, he averaged just 14.5 minutes. He made 18 three-pointers in 17 games. Hughes rose up from the left baseline. The ball splashed through the net with 1.8 seconds to play.
"It was a big rebound by Kev," Hughes said. "I just had confidence in me. I know that my team had confidence in me to make that shot. We was in that predicament in our last game at Ole Miss. Same predicament. I told Kevin after I hit it I couldn't disappoint him two times in a row."
Hughes did not disappoint. But the heroics for Hughes and the other the Tigers wearing the gold uniforms were not done for the night.
Missouri trailed 83-80 with 1:36 to go, but Dunans missed a free throw that would have given Auburn a two-possession lead. Fifteen seconds later, Hughes made another three, this one tying the game at 83.
Mizzou survived two Auburn misses on a possession that took 52 seconds off the clock. Anderson called a timeout to draw up a play for the final shot.
"We drew up a play actually to rope KP down to the post and have Cullen pop up," he said. "Obviously it didn't work which most of them don't. Mostly players that get things done."
It was up to Puryear to get it done. After a less than fluid possession, he had the ball at the top of the key. Already with a career-high 27 points, Puryear let fly his ninth three-point shot of the night. For the fifth time, it found the bottom of the net, this time as the buzzer sounded. A brief unnecessary trip to the monitor by the officials confirmed what everyone already knew: Missouri 86, Auburn 83.
The Tigers had lived to fight another day.
"Just to help get the win for the team, but more so get the win for Coach A," Hughes said. "He's a great man. He did so much for me this season alone. Just so much that I can't even explain. He's just very, he's really special."
There was no "win one for me" speech from Anderson during the days leading up to the tournament.
"We obviously talked about it last week when I told them, but other than that, we really haven't," Anderson said. "It was pretty much business as usual."
"We already knew," Hughes said. "Once we found out the news, there wasn't any discussion about it. It was like, we gotta get this one."
"It was just kind of something that we're gonna go out on a good foot and give him one more. We tried to do that," Geist said. "It's amazing to get one more game here in Nashville."
Missouri will, at least, get that. The Tigers (8-23) now play sixth-seeded Ole Miss at approximately 8:30 on Thursday night. From there, who knows? Anderson joked on a radio show earlier this week that all he had to do was go win 11 more games--five here in Nashville and then six in the NCAA Tournament.
"Anybody knows," Puryear said, "Anything can happen in March."
What comes of this will not change the future. Every time he takes the floor, Kim Anderson knows he could be doing so for the final time as the head coach at his alma mater. But Wednesday was not destined to be that night.
"I was just happy that these guys could win a game like this," Anderson said. "I've been really lucky this year. Obviously I've been unlucky at the end, but I was lucky to coach a group like this.
"Happy to be playing another day. Happy to have another day to be the coach at Mizzou."
