Mizzou’s win vs. Illinois — and how it arrived — must change how we view the Tigers
.JPG "Members of the Missouri men’s basketball team celebrate after defeating Illinois on Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022, in St. Louis.")
Missouri guards Nick Honor and Ronnie DeGray stood near half-court, and by all indications they were content to allow enough cushion for an ensuing inbounds pass. But then they turned to the yell of their head coach.
Dennis Gates dramatically motioned for them to pressure man-to-man, a spur-of-the-moment adjustment that left Illinois forward Coleman Hawkins absorbing the feel of a quarterback fooled by a cornerback blitz. Illinois got got, as they say, and Hawkins had to burn a timeout.
An audible.
In a night chock-full of them.
Missouri looked like a completely different team during a 93-71 drubbing of No. 16 Illinois on Thursday than it did 12 days earlier against its rival from the opposite border.
Well, the Tigers looked vastly different because they were willing to look so vastly different.
Insistent on it, actually.
The 93 on the scoreboard will ultimately stand out, particularly because it represents the most points they have scored in a Braggin’ Rights game absent overtime. But Mizzou mixed and matches defenses so effectively that you couldn’t help but wonder if Illinois had prepared for it.
Missouri was darn near perfect in the first half, unquestionably the best 20 minutes in Gates’ first year, and he had his fingerprints all over his biggest win to date — but one that left you thinking there could be more coming. A pair of inbounds plays, one from the baseline, another from the sideline, led to points on one end. And the mixture of zone and his preferred full-court pressure defense kept the Illini completely out of sync on the other.
By the half’s end, Missouri had scored 19 points off turnovers. Illinois? Zero.
For more than a month, we saw these kinds of moments in spurts from the Tigers, though they were footnoted — and rightfully so — by the competition. Then, just 12 days ago, Mizzou played its first opponent ranked among the best 90 teams in the country on KenPom, and it got blasted. It didn’t help that it was Kansas on the other end of that delivery.
We thought we learned something about Missouri that day.
We did.
But we’ve learned more yet in the next 12.
Missouri followed with back-to-back wins outside Columbia against UCF and Illinois — their most difficult non-conference opponents outside of KU — and, sure, you could twist that stat to whichever narrative you prefer. But it is a glowing sign of some buy-in from a group of players who haven’t had much time to research the product.
Missouri’s test Thursday at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis did not just derive from an enhancement in competition but the individual reply from players and coaches who had succumbed in their first opportunity against better competition. Illinois is not KU, to be sure, but it’s most certainly not Lindenwood, Houston Christian or Mississippi Valley State, either.
This is, therefore, the first time we’ve truly seen what kind of team the Tigers could be, at least without grading on a soft-schedule curve. Illinois was ranked 16th in the country and got beat bad enough that its head coach spent a considerable amount of time questioning his team’s toughness.
By a Missouri team that is already just one win shy of last year’s total. By a Missouri team that lost this same game by 25 points a year ago. No one needs any convincing this team is in a better spot heading into the turn of 2023 than it was heading into the turn of 2022.
But who knew they could be in this spot heading into SEC Conference play? Kentucky and Arkansas are quite the introduction to that league schedule, but Missouri just put together a preamble that has to change the way you look at their future, or at least their potential future.
Sure, the Tigers won’t often shoot it the way they shot it Thursday — they were 10 of 20 from three, for starters. And Kobe Brown can’t have a career night every time out, though it would help if they continue to play through him like they did Thursday. He had 31 points, 8 assists and 5 rebounds.
But we can factually say it’s possible the Tigers can put nights like these together, and that’s probably not a sentence many would have constructed hours before tipoff. That, at minimum, thrusts higher their ceiling. They do indeed have another level, one capable of more than anyone should have been expected in Gates’ first season.
In a year defined by its change before the Tigers even played a game, they reached that level as a result of, well, change. This wasn’t the same game plan that KU point guard Dajuan Harris ripped to shreds, again and again, only to see Missouri stick with it, again and again. Gates has shown an ability to play differently, and Illinois, for one, showed a reason why he should.
The best teams in conference play can win with their own stuff, and they can win by running the team out of their stuff. The Tigers were effective in both Thursday, a couple of weeks after looking incapable of either.
In the end, that probably means the Tigers sit somewhere between those two ends of the spectrum.
But one end of that spectrum just stretched out.