‘It just started to spiral’: What went wrong for Mizzou Tigers in upset loss to Roos
Missouri men’s basketball coach Cuonzo Martin prides the way his teams play with toughness and effort. But on Monday night, the Tigers were out-done in both of those areas and nearly every other facet of the game by the Kansas City Roos, a Summit League opponent.
The result? A 80-66 upset loss in a game Mizzou entered as 11 1/2-point favorites.
“You try to spend a lot of time with your guys working on tough stuff, gritty stuff, fighting through screens, boxing [out], all those tough things to prepare them for this,” Martin said following the loss. “But oftentimes, sometimes those painful lessons, you have to go through them. And we went through it.”
The last time Mizzou suffered this big of a defeat to an opponent outside of the major six college basketball conferences was a 70-55 loss to Davidson in 2016, the season before Martin was hired.
Leading up to Monday’s game, Martin tried to impress on his team that it needed to take its upcoming opponent seriously.
“Respect all and fear none.” He repeated those words to them on multiple occasions, including Sunday’s practice and shoot around before the game.
“This is not casual basketball,” Martin said. “You respect your opponent, because anybody can beat you. Because oftentimes, as a coach you can see these things coming.”
He added following the loss that he didn’t think his players took their opponent “for granted [in] any way, shape or form,” but that they failed to execute and didn’t compete at the level they are capable of playing at.
The Tigers (1-1) were stagnant all night on offense. They settled for bad shots, shooting 4-of-14 on three-pointers, and turned the ball over 18 times, resulting in 20 points for their opponent. They struggled to grab offensive rebounds, something the team had prided itself on, coming up with just six on the night. And when it came to free chances at the free-throw line, they only managed to convert 14 of their 24 shots (58.3%).
Mizzou couldn’t put a stop to the bleeding on defense either, allowing the Roos’ guards to get whatever they wanted. Evan Gilyard II had 28 points, including 6-of-8 shooting beyond the arc, and Marvin Nesbitt Jr. had 20. The game plan was to force Gilyard to his right, but they let the 5-foot-10 guard get to his left and torch the defense with a shifty handle all night long.
“We just gotta turn it up,” Mizzou guard Javon Pickett said when asked about the team’s perimeter defense. “We talk about this stuff all the time in practice. We just got to go out there and actually do it. Allowing guys to get comfortable. They’re knocking down deep shots, so we got to start getting a hand up. Today we said don’t let [Gilyard] go left. [He] went left every time, got to the rack whenever he wanted to. It was the game changer.”
In the opening minutes of the game, guard Anton Brookshire inbounded the ball to forward Kaleb Brown and then took the ball back in the corner off a handoff. He had some brief separation, so the freshman decided to take a three-pointer despite there being 23 seconds left on the shot clock, plenty of time to find an easier look.
The shot airballed into the hands of Kansas City guard Shemarri Allen, who sprinted down the floor and found guard Anderson Kopp on the wing. Kopp let off a shot from beyond the arc and drained it. Nothing but net to give Kansas City a 10-6 advantage with 15:58 left in the first half.
Mizzou was never able to regain the lead from there.
“All of a sudden we were just playing catch up the whole time,” Martin said. “They’d make a couple shots, then they have our defense spread out. I think it just started to spiral from there.”
The Tigers entered halftime down 32-23. That first half felt like a waiting game, wondering when they were finally going to go on a run over a Summit League opponent that had allowed 71 and 89 points in its prior two games to Minnesota and Iowa, both losses.
But the second half was much of the same. Mizzou managed to go on an 8-0 run, bringing the contest as close as 56-42 with 9:42 left, but the Tigers weren’t able to sustain the temporary momentum. Gilyard drained a three-pointer to stop the burst from the Tigers, putting the game right back in Kansas City’s favor en route to the upset.
Mizzou was thoroughly outplayed, not just losing a guarantee game, but getting blown out in one, raising questions for what lies ahead this season.
“I hope our guys don’t just brush this under the rug,” forward Kobe Brown said. “Hopefully you learn from this. I don’t want them to just let it clear their mind. I hope they think about it for tonight, tomorrow. And then we move on to the next game. But I don’t want them to forget this.”
