It’s been 672 days since the Missouri Tigers MBB team has won a regular season game in SEC play, and that number climbs again, following their 84-68 loss to No. 2 Auburn.
Dennis Gates and the Tigers went into Neville Arena with high hopes of knocking off their SEC foes, the No. 2 Auburn Tigers. Mizzou was searching for their second win against a top five team, after beating No. 1 ranked Kansas on Dec. 8.
Missouri knew before the matchup that thwarting the Auburn offense would be no easy task, and it proved just that. Heading into conference play, Auburn was led in points and assists by Johni Broome. Broome, who landed himself a spot on the Naismith Award watch list, would be the center of attention for Missouri’s defensive scheme.
Broome exceeded these expectations against Mizzou’s defense. The 6 ’10 center scored 24 points, collecting seven rebounds and dishing out two assists in the process, proving to be too much to handle for Missouri’s tandem of bigs, in Mark Mitchell and Josh Gray.
Along with Broome’s performance , Auburn’s first half performance from beyond the arc allowed Auburn to head into halftime with a 12-point lead. The Tigers headed into the matchup averaging 10 3-pointers per game, the 2nd most in the SEC. Against Missouri, they tied their season average with 10, 7 of their 10 coming in the first half. This was Auburn’s fifth game of the season with 7+ three-pointers in the first half.
These struggles to defend beyond the arc are not new to Dennis Gates and the Missouri Tigers. In their recent comeback win against Jacksonville State, the Gamecocks were able to shoot 40% from three against the Tigers.
Despite Mizzou’s lackluster defensive performance, the absence of their offensive presence against Auburn left many wondering whether Missouri would be able to produce against high level teams.
Heading into their matchup against Auburn, Missouri had the ninth most ppg out of all Division I teams. The Tigers were also one of four D1 teams to score 75+ ppg in every game this season. This cohesive Tigers offense was nowhere to be seen in Neville Arena on Saturday afternoon.
Missouri shot 42% from the field in the first half, their lowest FG percentage of the season. The Tigers were also unable to look to their familiar sources for scoring, as all 5 of their starters were only able to put up single digits in the scoring column.
Missouri also continued to struggle from the free-throw line against Auburn. Mizzou shot only 71% from the stripe, which is a tale that Tiger fans are all too familiar with. Most notably, against rivals Illinois, where Missouri shot 28 for 37 from the line in their three-point loss to the fighting Illini.
Despite the 16 point loss, the Tigers found a bright spot in the same place they have all season, their bench. Marques Warrick scored 19 points off the bench, 15 of which came in the second half.
The Tigers bench averaged 41.7 PPG before the loss, which put them second out of all D1 teams.
The Missouri Bench will have to step up now more than ever heading into conference play, as they are slated for an extremely competitive next few months, In which they will face 11 ranked opponents during SEC conference play, including No.1 Tennessee and No. 5 Alabama.
Missouri will look to bounce back against the LSU Tigers, and potentially snap their conference losing streak of nearly two years. The battle of the Tigers is slated to tipoff tonight from Mizzou Arena on Jan. 7.