Mizzou loses to last-place Mississippi in disappointing performance

Missouri’s most disappointing defeat of the season ended like this:

Kassius Robertson hung his head after the buzzer sounded, once Jordan Geist had airballed a three that sealed Missouri’s 90-87 overtime loss to Mississippi on Tuesday. Ole Miss players encouraged Mizzou students to berate them even more as they jogged toward their locker room as winners for the first time in almost a month.

And senior Jordan Barnett held his hands out to his sides, as though he did not know how Mizzou (18-10, 8-7) had just lost to a team that held sole possession of last place in the Southeastern Conference coming into this week.

But really, Barnett did know how this happened.

“Same thing that it’s usually been,” Barnett said. “Couldn’t close out the game. Turnovers down the stretch. Same old, same old.”

This time, Mizzou had come from behind after a slow start and held a five-point lead with about 2 minutes remaining. But graduate transfer Kassius Robertson turned the ball over on consecutive possessions with around 1 minute remaining in regulation. Mississippi’s Breein Tyree drove for a score that tied the game at 84-84 and forced overtime.

In the extra period, Jontay Porter, Jeremiah Tilmon and Barnett all missed free throws as MU went 3 for 8 from the foul line. Those were Missouri’s only overtime points. Geist took the Tigers’ final two shots: a layup that Ole Miss blocked and a three he came up short on as a play broke down while time expired.

So, yeah, like Barnett said, “same old, same old” for a team that has experienced a remarkable turnaround after three rotten seasons but occasionally still fails to close out games.

The difference between this loss and any other for Mizzou, though, is the caliber of opponent. Even LSU, which beat Missouri this past weekend, had won a pair of conference road games. The Rebels hadn’t prior to this one. They had lost seven straight games before Tuesday. They have been so bad this season that Andy Kennedy, their former head coach, said he would resign at the end of the season — and then he decided to step down even sooner, before Ole Miss visited MU.

This loss delivered a severe hit to Missouri’s chances to earn a top-four seed in the SEC and have a double-bye in the conference tournament. Now the Tigers play two straight road games, starting with one at Kentucky.

“We proved that we’re not on the bottom of the SEC,” Tyree said. “A lot of those shots going in were just the passion from the whole season coming out.”

Tyree scored a game-high 25 points, including his team’s first eight points. The Rebels jumped out to an early lead that they held until Missouri found its three-point shooting stroke in the second half.

Coach Cuonzo Martin’s team likes to pride itself on defense. Kevin Puryear said the Tigers try to hold opponents to 60 points or fewer each game, but Mizzou allowed Ole Miss to score 42 points in the first half. Tyree skipped into the locker room at halftime.

How did Mizzou have six of its eight players who checked into this game — Porter, Geist, Tilmon, Barnett, Robertson and Puryear — score in double figures and still lose?

Martin said his team, which outrebounded Ole Miss by eight boards, didn’t box out as well as it needed to, which led to 13 Rebel offensive rebounds and 18 second-chance points for Mississippi.

Puryear said the Tigers aren’t communicating as well on defense as they did during their five-game winning streak that really was alive just a week ago.

Here’s another reason: The Rebels missed just one free throw, while the Tigers missed 11 of their 31 attempts.

And here’s one more reason: Missouri turned the ball over 21 times, which led to 19 points for Mississippi. Puryear called that “inexcusable … embarrassing, actually.”

“We have enough to be successful,” Martin said. “But we don’t have enough if we’re not on the same page and we’re not clicking on all cylinders.’

The Tigers shot 8-of-12 from three in the second half, and a Geist three-pointer finished a 12-5 Mizzou run that gave Missouri its first lead of the second half with just under 5 minutes left in regulation. A Barnett dunk gave the Tigers a five-point lead with just more than 2 minutes remaining.

But then the “same old, same old” happened, and the Tigers lost to a team that was perhaps the worst one left on its schedule.

MISSISSIPPI 90, MISSOURI 87, OT

This story was originally published February 20, 2018 at 10:59 PM with the headline "Mizzou loses to last-place Mississippi in disappointing performance."