There are no small games, just small sportswriters. So this week I decided to dig into the marrow of a forgettable basketball game and see if I could glean any big truths.
Here is my report.
Like any good sportswriter, I began my research of Missouri’s opponent after the chili dog and before the national anthem. At Mizzou Arena, this is the best time to do research because it is impossible to communicate with the person next to you, as the music is played at torturing-a-terrorist-to-make-him-crack volume and there aren’t enough soft human bodies to diffuse the audio assault. What I learned about Incarnate Word did not bode well for the visitors from San Antonio.
Coach Carson Cunningham’s online biography begins as follows: “In 2018-19, the Cardinals made huge strides in the classroom …”
Uh, oh. When “strides in the classroom” is in the first sentence, it’s going to be a long year. But what Cunningham lacks in talented athletes, he adds in delightfully described players. Each player’s bio includes a quote from Cunningham, who has a PhD in American history and a vocabulary culled from the flapper era: “can shoot the apple … manages the books with aplomb … a fine lecture-hall operator … rugged, tough, leather-bound … an apple-slinger … vim and vigor, zoom and zip.”
During a brief respite from the eardrum attack, I mentioned to my PowerMizzou brother-in-tinnitus Mitchell Forde that, given the chance, my first postgame question to Dr. Cunningham would seek his opinion on the Teapot Dome scandal. I wound up chickening out and asking Cunningham two basketball questions. I am happy to report that that even in that small sample he referred to a basketball as an apple, which made me happy and hopeful that he can help Incarnate Word succeed on the court as well as the classroom.
On this night, the Cardinals weren’t good enough to expose any weaknesses in Missouri. The Tigers did struggle in the apple-slinging department, making just 7 of 31 shots from 3-point range, but a team with Mark Smith, Torrence Watson and Xavier Pinson — three guys who shot the 3 well last year — should be fine in the old honeycrisp-hurling department over the long haul.
In the final minute of the first half, the embodiment of Cuonzo Martin’s dreams of his offense was achieved when Pinson fed Jeremiah Tilmon, who met stiff resistance and passed the ball out of the post to Watson, who made a 3-pointer. Missouri took Incarnate Word’s vim and vigor then and there. The Cardinals’ zoom and zip were likewise greatly diminished after halftime.
In fact, the most compelling competition of the second half came during a showdown between a fan and Missouri walk-on guard Evan Yerkes to determine who could name the most ice cream flavors. The fan managed eight before spending the final seconds of his allotted time trying to crowd-source additional answers and complaining about the suggestions. Then we saw Yerkes in a prerecorded segment on the scoreboard. After starting with the classics, Yerkes faltered and began listing things like “Superman” and “blue moon” that certainly did not sound like ice cream flavors. On the clip, he was called out for the seemingly made-up blue moon but then was vindicated when a photo was displayed of blue moon ice cream, which looks very much like congealed Windex. Left unquestioned, however, was this Superman business. So I did a little research of my own, and I found an article describing Superman ice cream as a Midwestern delicacy — Yerkes is from suburban Chicago — and, get this, Superman is a three-flavor concoction, and one of the components is blue moon! Crazy. So Yerkes was rightly credited with nine right answers, and the fan had to slink away without a prize.
If there’s anything we can learn from this basketball game moving forward, it is that if you are picked to compete in an ice cream flavor naming contest, just start rattling off random word combinations, because it’s a big world out there, and in one corner of it, people eat horse flesh ice cream. If you can learn even one life lesson from a basketball game, it’s worth the permanent hearing damage.
A Brief Preview of a Season That’s Already Started
On senior day 2023, Missouri women’s basketball players Aijha Blackwell and Hayley Frank will look back and laugh about the way their college careers started. The heavily hyped future stars of the program watched from the bench for most of Tuesday’s season-opening overtime victory over Western Illinois. Frank was Tilmon-esque, showing great productivity while she was on the floor — piling up nine points and five rebounds in 18 minutes — but she couldn’t stop fouling. Blackwell missed all seven shots she took … and also couldn’t stop fouling.
It was Amber Smith and the oldsters who saved the Tigers from a bad loss. Missouri has a lineup that can spread the floor with 3-point shooters, but defense and rebounding could be a problem. Western Illinois, which is not an SEC-sized team, grabbed 24 offensive rebounds. For all the talk about the difficulty of replacing Sophie Cunningham, not enough was said about replacing Cierra Porter inside.
As an aside, I think “Hayley Franks” will become the next “Chase Daniels” of incorrectly pluralized last names. I see no heir apparent to Kevin Puryear in terms of incorrectly pronounced last names.
Some Closing Thoughts on Moral Victories
We have reached the difficult portion of Missouri’s football schedule, which means it’s the perfect time for a surprisingly pleasant defeat, or, as it’s better known, a moral victory. Saturday’s game at Georgia is a prime opportunity. The Bulldogs are sixth in the College Football Playoff rankings and taking a breather between the Florida and Auburn games. They should be ripe for the moral picking.
A moral victory is probably better than nothing, albeit not in any tangible way except it produces fewer fire-the-coach screeds from angry fans.
How will you know if you are witnessing a moral victory? First, you won’t be watching an actual victory. That’s the easy part. Second, you will hear the announcers use the following phrases in the second half: “Missouri is hanging around … this one isn’t over quite yet … this is a game Barry Odom can build on.” Third, you will read postgame quotes that say, “If we play this way the rest of the year, we’ll be just fine.” Fourth, you will become angry all over again about those losses to Wyoming, Vanderbilt and Kentucky.
