Missouri women get a No. 7 seed in NCAA Tournament, will face Drake on Friday

Robin Pingeton is going home to Iowa.

The Missouri women’s basketball team landed a No. 7 seed in the Greensboro Regional of the NCAA Tournament and the Tigers will travel to Iowa City to play Drake, a No. 10 seed, at 3 p.m. Friday in a first-round game shown on ESPN2. The Bulldogs got an at-large bid after losing to Missouri State in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament championship.

Pingeton expressed surprise at Missouri’s seed and expected the Tigers to be a No. 5 or No. 6 seed, but knows the process to rank teams for the tournament is difficult, having gone through it in a mock process a few years ago.

Should Missouri beat Drake, it could set up an interesting matchup for Pingeton in round two Sunday if No. 2 seed Iowa advances.

Pingeton’s sister, Lisa, played at Iowa under coach C. Vivian Stringer, who now coaches at Rutgers. The Hawkeyes are currently coached by Lisa Bluder, who was Pingeton’s college coach at St. Ambrose from 1986-90. Pingeton declined to discuss potentially facing Bluder and said she’s taking it, “one game at a time.”

Like Pingeton, Drake coach Jennie Baranczyk also played for Bluder, but at Iowa.

Drake currently has Grace Berg, who transferred from Missouri in January and won’t be eligible until next season. Missouri junior guard Amber Smith declined to answer questions about Berg on Monday.

Missouri is 1-3 all-time against Drake and 1-5 against Iowa. Should the Tigers win their first two games, the Tigers will head to Greensboro, N.C., to likely face North Carolina State.

There is a sense of urgency for the Tigers to get to the Sweet 16, with star player Sophie Cunningham in her final season. Missouri was upset as a five seed by Florida Gulf Coast in the first round last year, despite the Tigers having their deepest team in years.

Players expressed optimism about making a deeper run than past years, since MU has won four of its last five games. Missouri ended the regular season last year with a blowout loss to Texas A&M before bowing out of the SEC Tournament two games in.

“We had a rough start to the season,” junior Jordan Rountree said. “We always kept telling each other, at least we haven’t peaked yet, we’re going to peak at the right time. Last season we peaked at the wrong time and we were in the decline at the worst time of the season.”

The draw is favorable for Missouri geographically, because Iowa City is a four-hour drive from Columbia, which could lead to some MU fans making the trip to the game. Missouri (23-10) had a strong showing at the SEC Women’s Tournament, making it to the semifinals for the first time in program history before falling to top seed Mississippi State.

Pingeton, who grew up 30 miles outside of Iowa City, said she’s already heard from numerous relatives about getting tickets. Pingeton’s father, Arlo Becker, died a few years ago and she immediately thought of her dad when seeing how close to home MU would be playing.

“When we played there a couple years ago he was so excited to have us back in his stomping grounds,” she said. “He would have really enjoyed it.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2019 at 4:29 PM.