Can Mizzou women's basketball win a SEC tournament game for the first time this week?
Robin Pingeton has assembled one the best Missouri women’s basketball teams ever and taken her program to a competitive level it had not been to in decades. But the coach, in her eighth season at MU, has never won a Southeastern Conference tournament game.
Pingeton’s latest chance to do so might also be her best yet. The Tigers will face No. 14 seed Mississippi, the conference's last-place team during the regular season. The Rebels, losers of 13 straight coming into this week, topped No. 11 seed Florida to advance to the second round. Ole Miss' only regular-season conference win also came against the Gators, and Missouri beat the Rebels by 19 points on the road earlier this season.
So Mizzou, the tournament's No. 6 seed, will be a heavy favorite for the game Thursday, which should begin around 8:30 p.m. But Pingeton is not concerning herself with that. History has taught her not to.
A season ago, the Tigers, a top-four seed, had a double-bye in the conference tournament. They were coming off a win at Alabama. And then …
“Well," Pingeton said, "that didn’t work well either."
Nope. Texas A&M, which Mizzou had beaten in the regular season, bounced the Tigers from the conference tournament. The year before, Auburn knocked MU out of the conference tournament just a couple of weeks after Missouri had won at Auburn.
If there’s any silver lining in failing to win a conference tournament game, it’s that Pingeton does not worry about what momentum her team does or does not carry into this week. Missouri is coming off its worst defeat of the season, a 19-point loss at Texas A&M that closed out the regular season.
“Perspective: We’ve done an awfully good job all season long,” Pingeton said. “We’ve done a lot of things that haven’t been done all season long.”
Missouri — No. 14 in the latest Associated Press poll — is 23-6. The Tigers were 11-5 in conference play. They have only lost one game to a opponent that is not currently ranked, and that team, Western Kentucky, finished the regular season atop the Conference USA standings.
The NCAA Tournament selection committee’s final bracket reveal before Selection Monday had the Tigers as the No. 11 overall seed, and the top 16 overall seeds host the first two rounds of the tournament.
That reveal came out before the loss at Texas A&M, though, so Missouri could use some insurance wins this week to make certain that the Tigers hold onto their place in the top 16.
Hosting NCAA tournament games has been a goal for this team all season, but Pingeton said she does not want her players to think about that when they take the floor on Thursday. She just wants them to be loose, to care only about the moment.
After all, the matchup against Ole Miss, as lopsided as it seems, presents a potential accomplishment of its own. The Tigers could finally win a conference tournament game.
This story was originally published February 28, 2018 at 7:26 PM with the headline "Can Mizzou women's basketball win a SEC tournament game for the first time this week?."