Missouri Tigers women’s basketball proves no match for No. 13 Tennessee in road loss
The Missouri women’s basketball team had proved worthy of competing with the nation’s best all season long.
The Tigers took then-No. 5 Baylor to the wire back in December. Later that month, they upset No. 1 South Carolina. In January, they pushed then-No. 12 LSU to the brink in overtime.
Mizzou looked primed to go toe to toe with another ranked foe on Thursday night. But this time around it was blown out, suffering a 76-62 defeat to No. 13 Tennessee at Thompson-Boling Arena after falling apart in the third quarter.
“I’d like to think you either win or you get better,” Missouri head coach Robin Pingeton said. “That’s just gotta be your mindset.”
Pingeton’s squad was held to 39.1% shooting from the field and outrebounded 46-31 in the defeat.
Tennessee guard Jordan Horston was utterly dominant. She scored 21 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and also had five assists. For Missouri, Lauren Hansen scored 22 points off the bench while Aijha Blackwell had 12 points and 10 rebounds.
The Tigers (16-8, 5-6 SEC) struggled against the size of Tennessee (20-4, 9-2 SEC), which boasted the likes of 6-foot-6 center Tamari Key and started three other players who were at least 6-foot. Key had seven blocks. LaDazhia Williams, MU’s 6-4 center, picked up her third foul early in the second quarter and had to sit until halftime.
“They’ve got great length and one of the taller teams that we’ll play,” Pingeton said of Tennessee’s size. “I mean, great shot blocking ability and they can clean up a lot of stuff at the rim. ... Their length, I think hurt us. I felt like just the timing of our ball movement at times was just like one or two seconds delayed, which a team like this — again, you’ve just got to really be on point, be on target.”
Missouri found itself in deficits of at least eight points on two separate occasion in the first half, but crawled back each time and only trailed 32-27 at halftime.
Come the second half, however, Mizzou proved no match for a hungry Tennessee team that had lost three of its last four games. The Tigers were outscored 26-6 in the third quarter and entered the final frame of the contest down 25 points.
“I’m obviously really disappointed in our third quarter,” Pingeton said. “I thought for the first half, played pretty solid, had some breakdowns, but overall I thought we played pretty well. Talked about some adjustments we needed to make in that second half and hoping to get a little bit more pressure in that third quarter ... You also got to knock down shots. We were 3 for 18 and in that third quarter and that really hurt us.”
Though Missouri found some life and went on a run in the fourth, the hole was too much to climb out of.
A win Thursday night could have added a huge boost to the Tigers’ NCAA Tournament resume. With five games left in the regular season, starting with a home matchup with Arkansas on Sunday, this team has more work to do to lock up a March Madness berth.
“We’ve lost some of these battles recently,” Pingeton said, “but I truly believe we can win the war, and that’s getting to that NCAA Tournament in March. We’ve got to keep our nose to the grindstone, we’ve got to have some self awareness, we’ve got to own what we need to own, we’ve got to clearly make some adjustments.
“... But I truly believe in this team. They’re just a tremendous group to coach, to be around. We’ve got a lot of talent in that locker room.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 7:31 PM.
