After everything that happened a season ago, Monday was supposed to be a lot of things for the Mizzou Tigers. It was a new beginning, a chance to refresh and an origin of reset optimism. However, the most important thing it turned out to be was a blown opportunity.
Mizzou Men’s Basketball opened their season with a trip to Memphis as the second leg of a home-and-home series between the two programs. The (Columbia) Tigers led 42-32 at the break thanks to making the matchup a full court game with how much Mizzou was getting out in transition. That optimism of a double-digit halftime lead on the road quickly went away, and Mizzou all of the sudden looked like a completely different team. The road Tigers were outscored in the second half by 18 and dropped the season opener to Memphis by a score of 83-75.
Now, on a surface level, an eight point loss on the road to a Memphis team that is favored to win the American doesn’t seem too bad. The context, however, is where things get tricky. Time and time again Mizzou had been competitive or even leading in games fairly late last season, and then they would let the opponent pull away. While concerning, the argument could be made that Mizzou was simply overmatched and injuries piled up among other things. There’s no argument for that anymore.
What happened was simply both teams went into the locker room. When they came out to play the final 20 minutes, one team adjusted and the other didn’t. Memphis was able to successfully speed Mizzou up in the second half leading to Dennis Gates’ team committing 11 second half turnovers. Mizzou had no answer for the traps that Memphis was throwing at them. To make things worse, Aidan Shaw and Trent Pierce both looked awesome in the first half and neither one of them played very much at all in the second half.
Anthony Robinson finished with 16 to lead Mizzou in scoring. Tamar Bates and Pierce both added 13 apiece. For Memphis, it was P.J. Haggerty who led them with 25 points including 22 in the second half. Haggerty was a transfer from Tulsa and won Freshman of the Year in the American last season.
The positives for Mizzou? The season is still very young and there’s plenty of time to figure out their rotation. However, that needs to be fixed. Mizzou shouldn’t have a true test again until December 3rd when Cal comes to town for the SEC-ACC challenge. Between now and then, Mizzou has six games and not a single one of those teams is ranked above 226 in KenPom. It’s a manageable schedule for the next month which this team needs right now to regroup and figure out who their guys are.
Mizzou’s next contest will be this Friday, November 8th with Howard coming to Mizzou Arena. The Bison have won the MEAC Tournament and played in the NCAA Tournament the last two seasons.