Mizzou fends off Illinois as Cuonzo Martin bristles against perceptions of his team
When the virtually unstoppable Ayo Dosunmu’s half-court desperation shot at the buzzer went wide on Saturday night at Mizzou Arena, a Missouri-Illinois Braggin’ Rights game like no other had landed as the most momentous win in the Cuonzo Martin era.
The 81-78 victory was forged through 52 overall fouls and defined by a telling MU stand in the crucible at game’s end after Illinois had rallied from 13 down. Prefacing that he was joking, Martin said, “It was a boxing match, and a basketball game broke out.”
But there was another sort of fight ahead after Mizzou’s third straight victory in the series, normally played in St. Louis but moved on-campus this year as a concession to the COVID-19 pandemic.
MU’s first victory over a top-10 team in Martin’s four seasons figures on Monday to put the Tigers (5-0) into The Associated Press rankings for the first time since January 2014.
With that prospect introduced, though, Martin bristled against those who seem to have underestimated and perhaps disrespected what he has going on here with a team picked to finish 10th in the Southeastern Conference and unranked even after a 4-0 start that included a victory over a ranked Oregon team and at Wichita State.
Let’s start with how he responded to the questions I asked him at the start of the postgame news conference about the likelihood of being ranked and whether he thinks that matters as much as seeing this team blossom before his eyes.
A ranking would be good for the fans and for the players, yes. But then he unburdened himself of what he wanted to express.
If MU isn’t ranked now, he said, “then all of it is foolishness anyway. So what’s the point in having it? That means you’re telling me there are 25 teams that are better than us.
“We’ve beaten two ranked teams. How many teams in America can say they beat two ranked teams? How many teams in America cay say they won true road games? It’s all phony to me at the end of the day. I don’t know why you rank teams anyway until after maybe December.”
He wasn’t done: “That’s all that buddy-buddy behind-the-scenes stuff; I’ve never been a fan of that because I don’t cut (any) side deals and I don’t have those type of relationships.”
It’s not entirely clear what moved him to say all this. But it’s easy to surmise one purpose in particular: to convey to his team that it shouldn’t feel defined by how outsiders might label it or limit its expectations.
So, no, thank you, he wasn’t going even to call this his biggest win at MU. Because that would also play into shallow perceptions that his team somehow over-achieved with a win like this since, you know, it wasn’t picked to do much.
Seeming to assume the voice of a random preseason poll voting media member, he said, “ ‘I’ll pick this team because it’s comfortable, and I’m always picking these guys because it’s easy instead of me doing my work and being diligent about it.’ ”
Meanwhile, MU and Martin seem to be performing all due diligence in coming together with the most veteran group in the Southeastern Conference.
That showed up again Saturday. The Tigers shared the ball, played gritty defense and had four players in double figures while out-rebounding Illinois 35-26, hitting 26 of 31 free throws and maintaining its composure in the waning moments.
“He knows what we’re capable of doing,” said junior guard Xavier Pinson, who had 17 points and five assists. “And we know what he wants.”
Hard-earned between Martin and a group he reminded has taken its lumps along the way to growing “from young men to men.”
You could say the fighting spirit he’s infused in this team and that chemistry showed up in fending off Illinois after a 69-56 lead had dissolved into a 76-76 tie on Dosunmu’s 35th and 36th points of the game with 3 minutes 18 seconds left.
That’s when it got interesting … and when Pinson said MU just got hungrier to win.
Two free throws by Mitchell Smith and a Pinson jumper made it 80-76 in the final minute. Then came some mayhem, with Illinois’ Kofi Cockburn flinging aside Smith as Cockburn cut it to 80-78. Cockburn was assessed a flagrant-one foul, giving MU two free throws and the ball with 40 seconds left.
But Dru Smith made just 1 of 2 for Mizzou, and after Kobe Brown missed a three-pointer Illinois had the ball back down three with 10.9 seconds left.
Dosunmu took an awkward shot before he had to, but Brown missed twice at the line to allow one last shot that missed and set off a celebration.
Off the court went the team … and back out it came with the Braggin’ Rights trophy.
Never mind that played before perhaps a few hundred family and friends of both teams, this backdrop was radically different from the gold standard in St. Louis — where this game bubbles at fever pitch with a split sell-out crowd in a venue between the two campuses.
In moments you ordinarily might not be able to hear the person a foot away from you, you could hear hands slapping five and coaches bellowing … at least when they weren’t piping in noise that sounds more like pure static than the hum of a crowd.
(Also against the grain under the circumstances: In the case of Illinois coach Brad Underwood, you could also see his mouth moving as he mostly gave up on using his mask as a glorified ascot).
Even so, it still came with all the same passion and drama we’ve come to expect between the teams … and a result that made up for an unsavory undercard earlier in the day when the MU football team (25th in the College Football Playoff poll) was jackhammered by CFP No. 9 Georgia 49-14.
Instead of squandering their chance in the nightcap, Martin’s Tigers mustered the sort of signature win that makes it a virtual certainty the Tigers will be ranked for the first time in the Martin era after beating an Illini team that won 83-68 at No. 10 Duke the other day.
But as Martin expressed so bluntly, this is less about what others think than what the team here does … and what it can do by season’s end.
“We know what we have here,” said Dru Smith, who led MU with 18 points. “We know what we have in the locker room.”
And that’s something Martin will stand up for.
This story was originally published December 13, 2020 at 12:17 AM.