Robin Pingeton doesn’t want basketball to be a grind. Sometimes, though, like Missouri's Wednesday practice, it can feel like that way. That’s why the Missouri head coach was concerned leading up to Thursday’s game against Kansas State.
Would her players let the lack of focus she saw in practice — as well as too many turnovers against the scout team — affect their game against the former-rival Wildcats in the Big 12/SEC Challenge?
Pingeton got her answer in the first few minutes of Missouri’s 73-59 win over Kansas State.
Not in the slightest.
“Somebody asked me what I liked most about my team and honestly, it’s the realness,” Pingeton said. “They’re very real. And I know that this is important to them. I think they took what I had to say and said, ‘We can’t do anything about it now, but tomorrow let’s make sure we’re ready to go.’”
Missouri (6-1) was ready to go on Thursday night. The Tigers jumped out to an early lead thanks to six points from Cierra Porter before she was benched with two fouls for the rest of the half.
With Porter out, Missouri looked beyond the perimeter. There, it found sophomore Amber Smith, who scored a career-high 23 points, including five three-pointers.
How big did the basket look for Smith?
“Huge,” she said.
Kansas State coach Jeff Mittie said Thursday’s game was strange for his team. Porter had four fouls by the end of the game, and junior Sophie Cunningham — who has averaged 17.8 points per game leading up to Thursday — had one point.
“If you would have told me (that), I probably would have been very happy,” Mittie said. “As it was, I should have got Amber Smith about four fouls because she was certainly the player that kept hitting every shot and caused us problems.”
It’s not as though Mittie forgot about Smith. Kansas State recruited her, and she is the reigning SEC Co-Freshman of the Year. Smith was 3-3 on three pointers in Missouri’s win over California on Saturday. There’s no doubt that she’s a great player, and she has the potential to accomplish big things for the Tigers.
Yet on a Missouri team with so many weapons — Cunningham, Porter and Jordan Frericks, to name a few — Smith can almost hide on the outside and wait for the ball to come to her.
That’s exactly what happened Thursday night. With Porter in foul trouble and Cunningham and Frericks not scoring as much as usual, Smith was crucial for the Missouri offense
Instead of scoring, Cunningham turned to defense. She held Kansas State’s Rachel Ranke to only six points and no three-pointers, and Cunningham led the Tigers with seven rebounds. Missouri out-rebounded Kansas State 39-28, too.
Pingeton said she was prouder than she has ever been of the junior guard for her mindset tonight.
“It’s hard when you’ve got a scoring mentality and you’re used to scoring the ball,” Pingeton said. “I thought (Cunningham) handled it well today.”
The game wasn’t without the usual fourth-quarter scare. Kansas State started the final 10 minutes on a 7-2 run before Missouri head coach Robin Pingeton called timeout.
The Wildcats still weren’t going away. The lead was cut to eight before the Tigers were able to finish the game behind, of course, a huge three-pointer from Smith and then a layup from Lauren Aldridge.
Missouri is now on a six-game win streak after dropping its first game of the season against Western Kentucky. It’s the longest streak for the Tigers since winning 13 in a row in 2015.
Surely, winning takes the grind out a little bit. Even so, Pingeton hopes her players take the focus they had in Thursday’s game and apply it to every practice and every game.
“For us to really achieve at the highest level, every day is important,” Pingeton said. “Just constantly trying to push the limit for them with excellence in everything we do … I’m not surprised the way they responded, but I definitely don’t want to get in the cycle.”
