Mizzou Tigers men’s basketball defeats Mississippi in first round of SEC Tournament
The Missouri Tigers’ season isn’t over just yet.
The 12th-seeded Mizzou men’s basketball team defeated the No. 13 seed Mississippi Rebels 70-62 in the first round of the SEC Tournament on Wednesday night at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida.
“A great win for our guys, our team,” Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin said during his postgame news conference. “Tremendous amount of focus.”
With the win, Missouri (12-20, 5-13 SEC) advanced to play fifth-seeded LSU (21-10, 9-9 SEC) on Thursday for a spot in Friday’s quarterfinal round. The game will air on SEC Network at 1:30 p.m.
The Tigers had one of their better offensive performances of the season against the Rebels, shooting 27 of 50 (54%) from the field. They scored 40 of their points in the paint.
“I thought we did a great job of getting into the paint,” Martin said. “That was one of the biggest emphasis, to get the ball in that paint, but also to get out and transition. ... We just continue to attack and try to make plays at the rim and when three point shots present themselves, be ready to take them. But again, good win.”
They also stepped up on the defensive end of the floor to hold the Rebels to a 41.1% shooting clip, including a 37% mark in the second half, where Missouri had a 40-28 scoring edge.
The first half was back and forth with six ties and six lead changes. The two teams were deadlocked at 32-32 at halftime.
In a win or go home situation, Mizzou was locked in to start the second half. The Tigers went on an 11-0 run with five consecutive made shots in less than three minutes for a 45-34 lead — its largest of the night.
Missouri continued to grow its advantage from there, leading by as many as 15 points. Ole Miss came close to trimming that lead to single digits at numerous points, but the Tigers responded each time.
“We can’t come out and get complacent with a lead,” said Kobe Brown, who led Mizzou in scoring with 16 points. “We’ve been in those situations before where we let the game slide away from us, so we emphasized on we didn’t want to go home. It’s win or go home — there’s no more next game — so we had to make everything count.”
Beyond Brown, the Tigers got contributions from across the roster, though, with five other players — Ronnie DeGray III, Javon Pickett, Jarron Coleman, Trevon Brazile and Amari Davis — contributing least nine points.
Here are some key takeaways from the game.
Tigers get season sweep
Mizzou only had two wins over one team in the regular season; it just so happened to be the one it was playing on Wednesday night.
The old cliche is it’s hard to beat a team three times. It’s something the Tigers hadn’t done since 2012, in its last year in the Big 12.
It took a decade, but that trend was bucked with the victory over Ole Miss. Missouri defeated the Rebels in each of their three meetings this season — accounting for a fourth of the team’s wins this season.
“It’s just been a bad mismatch for us,” Ole Miss head coach Kermit Davis said. “I mean, we’ve had a lot of success against Missouri before and we beat them last year twice when they were ranked in the top 10. ... They’re a tough matchup for us for some reason and they just played well all three games, so give them a lot of credit.”
The victory also marks the first time the Tigers won consecutive conference games this year.
Rebounding is key
Missouri had the advantage on the boards on Wednesday night, outrebounding Mississippi 37-25
Rebounding has been a common thread throughout the Tigers’ wins this season. They are now 12-2 when outrebounding their opponent, meaning they’ve done so in each of their victories this season.
“We knew that we had to get rebounds in order to win the game,” Brown said. “So we tried to make sure we got our hands on it at the very least every time the ball came off the rim, especially on the defensive end.”
Every player available for Mizzou grabbed at least two rebounds. Brazile led the way with eight boards, along with three blocks, and Brown had seven.
“He just continues to improve,” Martin said of Brazile. “No question, he should have been an all-league guy as a freshman. We have some great ones in this league, but he should have been one of them.”
Lead the way, Ronnie DeGray III
Ronnie DeGray III only shot 26% from beyond the arc during the regular season, but you wouldn’t be able to tell with the way he looked on Wednesday night.
The sophomore forward drained three three-pointers in a row in the first half, the last of which gave Mizzou a 17-15 lead and forced an Ole Miss timeout with a little under 12 minutes left.
“I felt good,” DeGray said. “It just felt like the rim was the ocean and everything was going in. But really shout out to Kobe (Brown) and the other guys for finding me.”
He scored a layup on an assist from Brown after that, marking a personal 11-0 run.
DeGray had 14 points in the first half alone, responsible for nearly 44% of the Tigers’ production. He finished with 14 points and two rebounds.
This story was originally published March 9, 2022 at 7:15 PM.
