MINNEAPOLIS — What felt like the Tigers’ lowest point in Thursday’s game against Minnesota ended up being their turning point. Missouri completed a 20-point comeback — its largest since head coach Dennis Gates took over the program — to escape Williams Arena with a 70-68 victory. Gates and his players credited graduate senior guard Caleb Grill with giving them the momentum to pull it off.

It’d been a frustrating night for all of Mizzou. The Tigers were trailing by 11 with a little over 13 minutes left in the second half. They were getting beat on the boards. They’d allowed the hosts to shoot 50% from the 3-point line in the first half. They hadn’t been granted a trip to the free throw line yet.

Gates knew his players needed something to galvanize them, but didn’t want to pick up a technical foul. Grill told the head coach he might need to play more “fiery.” Gates told the Iowa State transfer to “do what you need to do.”

Grill pulled up from the right wing and missed his fourth 3-pointer of the night. Golden Gophers defender Pharrel Payne bumped him on the landing, sending Grill to the deck and looking to the official on the sideline for a call.

The whistle never came. Sitting on the hardwood, Grill slammed his hands on the floor. The referee assessed Grill a Class A technical foul. Grill rose to his feet and was quickly T’d up again — it’s unclear if it was for something he said or possibly making incidental contact with the official. Regardless, he’d been tossed out of the game.

Graduate senior point guard Nick Honor and assistant coach Ryan Sharbaugh watched the sequence unfold from Mizzou’s bench.

“As soon as it happened, (Sharbaugh) turned to me, I was over standing by him on the sideline,” Honor said. “He was like 'Maybe that's just what we needed to get back in the game.'”

Grill untucked his black jersey and began his march to the locker room. Assistant coach Dickey Nutt jogged to the corner of the court and halted Grill before he could get to the tunnel. Gates pulled him to the side trying to calm him down, holding Grill’s head in his hands at one point and giving him a hug before sending him off.

“I told him that was going to inspire us to win. And I told him, we'd talked, we needed a spark,” Gates said. “What I was telling them there was, 'Hey, that's OK. I didn't expect you to get a double tech, but you got to double tech.' And I wanted him to know that we were gonna finish the game for him and, ultimately, told him I love him. I told him, ‘Now walk out with pride, with your chin up.’”

Junior guard Kaleb Brown, who’d been ruled out for the evening with a shin bruise, told Gates he'd go to the locker room to make sure Grill wasn’t too down on himself. He returned a few moments later, letting the team know that Grill was fine.

It had the impact Gates was hoping for.

“I mean, anytime you see a teammate get ejected, you kind of feel for them because you know they can have an impact while they're on the floor,” Honor said. “But it was a true road game tonight — that's what I'll call it. So I feel like it just brought us closer together, next man up, and you know, we were gonna get this win for Caleb. So I would say thank you to him. I guess you could say that.”

Senior forward Dawson Garcia made all four of Minnesota’s technical free throws. The Golden Gophers cashed in on another layup and 3-pointer to take their largest lead of the night at 59-39 with 11:25 left on the clock.

Missouri closed out the game on a 31-9 run. The team finally made its way to the free throw line, taking eight foul shots in the final five minutes. It also locked down on defense — after letting the Golden Gophers have their way from beyond the arc early on, the visitors held the hosts to 1-9 from deep in the second half.

The Tigers got their swagger back, with several players returning to form. Gates doesn’t think it would’ve happened without Grill.

“I credit Caleb Grill, his passion that he plays with, an unbelievable toughness, for making that play that he made. And that was to inspire his team,” Gates said. “He did his job and our team rallied behind him.”

Mizzou’s point guard started the comeback himself. On the very next possession after letting the lead balloon to 20, graduate senior forward Noah Carter found Honor on the perimeter for the team’s second triple of the half. The hosts committed a traveling violation on the next trip down. The black and gold let Honor go to work at the top of the key. The 5-foot-10 guard caught his defender leaning on a drive and hit a turnaround jumper from the left elbow.

The Golden Gophers missed their next shot and Missouri pitched the ball ahead to Honor, who canned another trey from the right corner and forced Minnesota to burn a timeout. The hosts scored out of the break, but Honor countered with another layup, making it 10 consecutive points and trimming the deficit to 61-49 with 9:02 remaining.

Honor ended the night with a team-high 16 points to go along with one rebound and one assist.

“Sometimes leadership's not always vocal,” Honor said. “I was just leading by example. So, Coach has been on me about shooting the ball a lot …”

“You think?” Gates asked, interrupting.

“... I'm still working on it a little bit,” Honor continued. “But I know the coaches believe in me, I know the work that I put in and, you know, I mean, I feel like we could definitely beat these guys regardless of if we were down by 20 or whatever. So it just felt like I needed to step up in that moment.”

Mizzou continued to chip away at Minnesota’s lead through the final minutes, finally making it a one-possession game at 65-63 after freshman guard Anthony Robinson II scored a layup on a fast break with 3:42 to go. The two sides traded free throws, with Indiana transfer guard Tamar Bates splitting a pair to tie it at 67-67, completing the 20-point comeback, and Garcia splitting another pair on the next possession to give the Golden Gophers a one-point edge.

The Tigers crossed halfcourt and called timeout with 16.6 seconds left. Gates initially drew up a play that would’ve had Carter on the block. Honor and graduate senior guard Sean East II talked the head coach out of it — they felt it would be better to have Carter outside, pulling a Minnesota big man away from the basket and opening up driving lanes.

“We knew that Nick Honor was the hot hand,” Gates said.

Honor inbounded the ball to East, then darted to the center of the free throw line to set a screen for his backcourt teammate. East drove left and Honor popped back behind the 3-point line at the top of the key — Honor’s man defended the kick-out pass. East made it to the left block, pump-faked to get his defender in the air, then finished through contact for the and-1 bucket, giving Missouri its first lead of the game with 9.9 seconds on the clock. It was his first field goal of the second half.

East drained his free throw to make it 70-68 and the Tigers held on during the last defensive possession to secure the come-from-behind win. East ended the game with nine points, two rebounds, three assists and three steals.

“We just knew we had to get the stop immediately. I mean, we were excited internally but externally, we knew we had to get a stop and that the game wasn't over,” East said. “I'm just glad we got the W. I mean, it was just, we fought so hard back and it's just good to have a reward at the end … It's a big time road win. It was our first road game of the season and we just showed who we are. We know we're a tough, resilient team that just, you know, when things get hard, we don't complain or cry about it. We just gotta dig down to find out who we are.”

After the victory, Mizzou’s head coach caught up with his father, who was one of the 7,975 in attendance for the game, as well as his aunts, who Gates said helped raise him. It was a special moment for those closest to Gates to witness him pull off one of his greatest coaching feats.

Former Cleveland State guard Broc Finstuen, who played for Gates during the 2021-22 season, made the trip to The Barn on Thursday, too. He wasn’t surprised by what he saw.

“It was cool to see, just watching him and how poised he was. It was just like when I played for him and just, it was crazy,” Finstuen said. “Like, they were down 20 and I said 'He's got this.' He just stayed calm the whole time. My brother was like, 'Just looking at him, you wouldn't even think that he was down 20.' So it was awesome to see.”

It was an important night for the Tigers. Gates is hopeful they can continue to build off of it.

"Adversity is going to be adversity," Gates said. "And like I said, we gotta make sure we use it in the right way, but also, there's no substitute for it. There's no substitute for growth. You have to go through something to get to where you are. I'm proud of the guys that came off the bench, I'm proud of Caleb Grill, I'm proud of everybody in this program because it's a program win."

The Tigers (3-1) return home to take on Jackson State (0-5) inside Mizzou Arena on Sunday at 5 p.m., the game airing on SEC Network+.

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