Sophie Cunningham rolled onto the ground holding her right ankle as her teammates defended on the other side of the court.
Friday’s crowd at Mizzou Arena held their breath as Missouri’s lead scorer got up — and caught a pass from Lauren Aldridge, who had just stolen the ball. Cunningham popped it over to Jordan Frericks for two points.
Even when it looked bad, Cunningham made it right.
Her 27 points were the highlight as No. 16 Missouri (12-1) Moved its win streak to 12 games and dominated Illinois (9-5) 72-55 Friday afternoon.
“I like those plays, but they’re not very common,” Cunningham said, after she assured her ankle was fine. “I just think that our team valued the ball at some points really well, but we have to get better at, just the little things. The boxing out, getting offensive boards and turnovers, and then a lot of things go well when you control those little things.”
Although Missouri continued its hot streak, those little things were cause for concern at the start of the game. Turnovers plagued the Tigers, who had a mere basket off of six Illinois turnovers. In comparison, the Illini scored 11 points off of 10 Missouri turnovers. All eight points Illinois scored in the second quarter were off of turnovers and second-chance opportunities.
The problem slowed down in the second half — Illinois only had two turnovers in the third quarter, and Missouri began its run. The Illini only scored two points off of turnovers in the second half.
“I know our girls wanted it and were focused,” head coach Robin Pingeton said, “but sometimes when you want something so bad, you try to force the action too much. We just had to exhale a bit and trust the ball movement and not try to make that home-run play on every possession.”
Trusting the ball movement worked more in the second half, and Missouri took better care of the ball to stop the easy transition buckets that Illinois was drilling in the first half.
But the Tigers had four turnovers in a row in the first four drives of the fourth quarter. Pingeton took a timeout to have her players slow down and breathe a bit after taking tough shots that weren’t going in.
“That’s hard,” Pingeton said, “You feel like the momentum is going and feel like you can attack. You feel like you’re being aggressive offensively, but just having the mindset instead of taking that tough contestant shot, having the discipline and the poise to swing the ball and get a good look.”
Pingeton said she’s anxious to see what Missouri can do when it’s clicking on all cylinders.
Despite the Tigers having won 12 in a row, the longest win streak since 13 straight in 2015, there are those little things to clean up. The turnovers, but also shot selection and foul trouble.
Missouri shot 51 percent from the field on Friday, making 25 of 49 field goals and 7 of 20 three pointers. Cierra Porter had four fouls in Friday’s game, and Frericks ran into foul trouble early on with two quick ones in the first quarter.
If the Tigers can clean up what went wrong in Friday’s game — the turnovers, finding better shots, staying out of foul trouble and not pushing the pace too much — and still dominate the way they did, they can set themselves up well for Alabama on Dec. 31. Non-conference games are officially over.
Pingeton thinks this year’s non-conference schedule was more challenging than past years, and that sets her team up to be battle-tested for SEC play.
The Tigers won all but one game — losing their first one to Western Kentucky — including a commanding win over Kansas State late in November.
“I thought our kids showed a lot of maturity, toughness, defensively and rebounding,” Pingeton said. “I think we’ve got a lot of weapons … different players that stepped up and had the hot hand for us. There’s a lot of really positive things that I think are happening for us.
