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Torrence Watson entered Missouri’s 91-33 win over Chicago State in a season-long shooting slump. The sophomore had taken 46 three-pointers this season and made exactly eight. Outside of a 3-for-5 performance against Oklahoma, Watson was shooting 12.2% for the season from beyond the arc.
He missed his first three threes against the Cougars, bringing his season percentage to 16.3%. He said when he went to the bench, walk-on Evan Yerkes told him to keep shooting. He did.
Watson hit two before halftime, including a pull-up to beat the buzzer and give Mizzou a 45-14 lead at the break. But the fireworks came in the second half.
Watson hit 6-of-8 after the break, giving him sole ownership of the Mizzou Arena record with eight threes in the game.
“To me, it felt like I couldn’t miss,” Watson said. “Honestly, I felt like if I would have shot it from half court it might have went in.”
“We’ve been seeing in practice every day," teammate Dru Smith said. "I just wanted to see him get out there and let it come out in front of everybody. He did that tonight.”
From the 9:11 mark to the 6:50 mark of the second half, four straight Missouri possessions resulted in Watson threes. The personal 12-0 run pushed the Tigers’ lead to 78-22.
“They didn’t do a great job of guarding the corner,” Watson said. “I think Dru realized every time down I was going to be right in that same spot."
“When you got a guy that’s feeling it like that, you’ve got to find him any time you can,” Smith said.
Two minutes later, Watson sunk his eight triple, giving him the building record, and was done for the night. He sat for the final 3:43 while walk-ons and seldom used freshmen mostly closed out the hapless Cougars.
CSU came into the game ranked above only two of the 353 Division One teams in the country. It was not a stiff test or one that was going to teach anyone much about the Tigers. Evan Yerkes scored five points. Brooks Ford made a three. So far as anyone could tell, the 58-point margin of victory was the largest in Mizzou Arena history, though it fell short of the school record, a 72-point win over…Chicago State.
The game offered a chance for players like Yerkes and Ford to get their names in the box score. But the story was Watson, a player Missouri will need if it wants to make a serious run at a winning record in the SEC and a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
“I wouldn’t have factored going into the season Torrence would struggle shooting the ball from three,” head coach Cuonzo Martin said. “You’re a different team.”
“I don’t think there were any adjustments. I think I just realized how much more work I had to put in,” Watson said. “It’s a really bad feeling when shots are not falling and you shoot three-pointers.”
Mizzou came into the game shooting just 27.7% from three-point range as a team this season. That put the Tigers 250th in the country. But against the Cougars’ generous defense, Mizzou hit 16 of 31 proving that they are capable of making shots from that far away.
“Threes are threes,” Martin said. “To see the ball fall, it’s a great thing.”
Seven different Tigers made at least one three on the night. But the other six combined to make only as many as Watson, who resembled the volume scorer the Tigers recruited out of Whitfield School. Watson scored 50 points three times as a high school senior, averaged 31.2 points per game and was named the Class 3 player of the year. He poured in 2,755 points in his prep career and followed it up by breaking the freshman record for threes with 53, including 24 in the final seven games of his first season.
The tests are about to get much stiffer. Conference play opens at Kentucky on Saturday. But Watson hadn’t had a night like he did on Monday in his first 43 games at Mizzou. So whether it was Chicago State or the Chicago Bulls, the splashes from every angle were a welcome sight.
“It changes who you are when you’re able to make shots,” Martin said.
