What Just Happened? Vol. 31

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We spent almost a year wondering if the Missouri men’s basketball team could transform itself from a punchline into an NCAA Tournament team. The Tigers pulled it off. Then they won one fewer postseason game in 2018 than they did in 2017. They followed a loss to Georgia in their SEC Tournament opener with a defeat to Florida State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

It was a long wait for a short ride.

Kassius Robertson was the only player who resembled his best self against the Seminoles. With the exception of the opening segment of the second half, when the Tigers cut a 22-point deficit to six, they were overwhelmed by Florida State’s size, athleticism and depth. They were a streaky team throughout Southeastern Conference play, and attrition left Cuonzo Martin with slim pickings on the bench when all the starters sans Robertson struggled.

The next day, the Missouri women’s team completed its season with an upset loss to Florida Gulf Coast in the first round. Sophie Cunningham was only player who resembled her best self against the Eagles, scoring 35 points. The loss was a major disappointment for one of the best teams in program history, one that had proven it could hang with — and beat — the SEC’s top teams.

College basketball is a four-month prelude to a three-week tournament. But a fair evaluation must give significant weight to the regular season and acknowledge the random nature of any given NCAA Tournament.

An early exit from the NCAA Tournament couldn’t spoil what Martin accomplished in his first year. The Tigers were irrelevant when Martin took over. Missouri is back on solid footing. It is a viable option for the state’s best high school players — unlike football, a Top 25 basketball program could be built on just in-state recruits — and a reasonable destination for transfers eager to find an NCAA Tournament contender to raise their profile.

That is more than Missouri could have hoped for before Martin was hired. With that said, now comes the hard part for him. He has a history of building 20-win teams that usually play in some sort of postseason tournament. He has yet to prove he can get a team from good to great. That is the standard he will have to meet, not next year but eventually.

For the women’s team, the first-round exit is a far bigger part of the final grade. Robin Pingeton has already earned well-deserved credit for steering the program out of the ditch and building fan interest where once there was minimal support. To continue the program’s steady upward trajectory, the Tigers needed to advance to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament this season. It didn’t happen. It didn’t even come close to happening.

Upsets happen in any given year, but we are now three years into the career of Cunningham — possibly the best player in program history — and she has a solid supporting cast, so time is running out on taking advantage of this rare talent. If Missouri doesn’t advance to the second week of the NCAA Tournament next year, it will be a lost opportunity.

For months the debate raged over whether Michael Porter Jr. would or should play for Missouri this season. Now the debate is whether he and his brother Jontay will return for another season.

The further we get from the bitter end of the season, which left Porter Jr. in tears, the more it will become a business decision rather than an emotional one for him. He appeared genuinely upset that he couldn’t fix Missouri’s problems, but he was simply too limited physically to be a savior. I give him credit for trying. He cared.

I read with interest a story from Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports! that quoted anonymous NBA scouts and executives about Porter and whether his postseason return helped or hurt his pro stock. The opinions varied, but there were a few that struck me as unfair. One source said Porter “doesn’t have the personality/mentality to be a killer” and another said he had a reputation for being “soft.”

On the first point, Porter could hardly move and he attempted 29 shots in two postseason games. He certainly seemed to have the mentality that he was the best player on the floor, even if he clearly was not. On the second point, Porter was willing to play hurt.

There is a double standard applied to football and basketball players. On one hand, they are expected to be well-adjusted student-athletes who will become model citizens in a pro city. On the other hand, if they don’t have a hard-luck story, if they have a middle-class upbringing and no rap sheet, they are forced to disprove the notion they are soft.

I suppose when Porter cashes his NBA checks, he will have millions of reasons to no longer care about those opinions.

There is no shortage of proposals for fixing college basketball, most of them big-picture ideas regarding the elimination of the NBA’s one-and-done rule and legislation allowing athletes to profit from their own likenesses and have access to agents.

Let me propose a little-picture idea: Declare war on floppers. College basketball officials simply cannot see the dinner theater thespianism for what it is, and they repeatedly reward defenders who pretend they just absorbed a cannonball to the gut every time an opposing ball-handler extends his forearm a tiny bit. All that remains is for trainers to hustle onto the court and magically rejuvenate writhing players with a mysterious aerosol spray and the transformation of college basketball to European soccer will be complete.

So many guys are toppling over, it’s like I’m watching a pickup game that broke out in the waiting room of an inner-ear infection specialist.

I do not recommend that referees should review every flop as they do potential flagrant fouls — there is only sporadic action between replay reviews as it is — but rather that no foul be called when a defender falls to the court unless he is standing still and the ball-handler barges into him in front of the basket. Continue to call offensive fouls if the defender remains on his feet. When the reward for acting dries up, so will the acting.

When Faurot Field’s Omniturf was ripped out in the mid-1990s, the remnants were left for a time in the parking lot south of the stadium. Fans were told to help themselves. Having paid my dues as a student during the Bob Stull era, I snipped off a piece of the slippery stuff and fashioned it into coaster. I thought I would place my beer on this rug and think about all the losses to Iowa State that I never wanted to endure in the first place, much less remember. The first time I used the coaster, I realized the filthy thing was still full of sand and defeat. There was no second usage.

Flash forward to now. The south end of Memorial Stadium has been leveled to make way for a new football facility. If this were Alabama or Notre Dame, each bit of rubble would be auctioned off at a price that would pay for the new construction, but it seems Mizzou’s concrete is destined for obscurity. Probably just as well.

What was the high point in the history of the south end zone? I’d say it was when Henry Josey dashed 57 yards for the winning touchdown against Texas A&M in the game that clinched the 2013 SEC East title.

The low point? That’s easy. End of the third quarter in the 2017 season opener against Missouri State. New inflatable mascot Waltz was introduced, staggered aimlessly, fell face-first and began to spasm on the turf. It appeared Waltz was experiencing either a medical or sexual emergency. That is when the nearby fans in the south bleachers wished the construction project had begun a year earlier.

With the end of basketball season, “What Just Happened?” will become an infrequent guest until football season rolls around again. I thought this column experiment went well. I quickly bonded with PowerMizzou.com readers over our mutual disdain for Waltz and enjoyed our weekly one-way conversations.

When current events dictate or inspiration strikes, I will crank out an offseason column. If I lose another fight to someone with a significant disability in the parking lot of the Black and Gold, you’ll be the first to know.

My plans for the next few months include spending less time staring at a computer screen, winning another Tuesday night E-League slow-pitch softball championship and, of course, searching for Waltz’s real killer.