Missouri-Oklahoma NCAA matchup echoes the past but stands for seizing the moment
Even after falling to Arkansas on Friday in the Southeastern Conference tournament for its sixth loss in its last nine games, the Missouri men’s basketball team was assured enough by its otherwise compelling profile to go straight from Nashville to Indianapolis to get situated for the NCAA Tournament — which will be played entirely in Indiana this year because of measures being taken to play amid the pandemic.
As it waited for the bracket to be announced Sunday evening, like several other teams that arrived early, MU set up in suites at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Before COVID testing and heading to its hotel to spend most of a week in a bubble, the traveling party even took a bus ride around the track and posed for a picture at the finish line.
Consider that the ceremonial starting of the engines in the curious case of the 2021 NCAA Tournament, where MU, seeded ninth in the West Region, on Saturday will take on eighth-seeded Oklahoma at 6:25 p.m. in Lucas Oil Stadium.
“Historic times,” MU coach Cuonzo Martin called the unprecedented circumstances.
Now it’s up to Mizzou to shed some recent history and secure its first NCAA Tournament win since 2010 in just its third NCAA tourney appearance since 2013.
More to the immediate point, MU will need to reset from its current skid and get back the MO-jo that enabled it to beat three top 10 teams this season and go 9-4 in games against tournament teams — including victories against a No. 1 seed in Illinois and a No. 2 in Alabama.
Sure, it’s one game.
But it’s one that will be paramount in the perception of the program under Martin, an awe-inspiring man still seeking his first NCAA Tournament win in his fourth year in Columbia.
“It’s a whole new season,” said senior guard Dru Smith, a first-team All-SEC choice. “Nothing really before this matters at this point, so you’ve just got to come in with a new energy and understand that anything can happen.”
True, Dru. But Oklahoma can emphasize the same point after losing five of its last six in a season that featured four victories over top 10 teams in January. The credentials were similar enough that the same matchup with opposite seedings would have been no surprise.
For that matter, while some MU fans think the Tigers deserved a better seed, it bears mentioning that No. 9 seeds are 72-68 against 8 seeds and 7-1 in the last two NCAA Tournaments.
The winner will likely play Gonzaga, the overall No. 1 seed that will take on the winner of the play-in game between Appalachian State and Norfolk State (yes, the school seeded 15th in 2012 that knocked out second-seeded MU).
To be sure, this MU-OU game will feature its own distinct intrigue, including the coaching matchup between Martin, (3-3 in NCAA Tournament games) and Lon Kruger (21-19 with two Final Fours to his name). Not to mention the memory of OU beating Missouri in a regional final in 2002 in their only NCAA Tournament meeting.
But part of the broader appeal is the subplot of a different sort of historic time, to borrow Martin’s term, winding back to the Missouri Valley/Big Six/Big Seven/Big Eight and Big 12 affiliation that ended when Mizzou left for the SEC in 2012.
Never was the series more fevered and fascinating than during Billy Tubbs’ 14-years in Norman, which included OU’s Final Four run in 1988 before losing to Kansas at Kemper Arena and a riveting rivalry with Mizzou coach Norm Stewart.
At a time each routinely coached top 10 teams, Tubbs, who died in November at age 85, jousted with Stewart so often it came to be an anticipated part of the game … or postgame.
When Stewart once complained that Tubbs was running around the court like a “jackass,” Tubbs soon thereafter referred to Stewart as “Francis the Talking Horse” but later clarified:
“I got Mr. Ed, the talking TV horse, mixed up with Francis the Talking Mule from the movies. I meant to say ‘mule’ because a mule is not a thoroughbred. A jackass is a thoroughbred, but a mule is a cross, I think, between a jackass and a horse. I think a mule is worse than a jackass.”
There was plenty more. But when Tubbs was leaving OU, he said “Norm and I kind of play the game everybody wants us to play, which is gouging each other a little bit.” And it wasn’t unusual for them to socialize thereafter.
The relationship between the schools naturally has distanced since MU’s departure, with the Tigers losing both times they’ve met since — most recently in 2019.
But even if it might be assumed that Martin and Kruger won’t engage in any such antics, the game figures to be furiously contested.
Because for each team, it’s a terrific chance to reframe their late-season trends and in some ways even redefine the season itself.
Perhaps MU senior forward Jeremiah Tilmon, the only current Tiger to have played in an NCAA Tournament before, is a microcosm of all that. Mizzou still was ranked in the top 10 when he took a two-game leave of absence for a death in the family. Those games became MU’s second and third losses in a row, and Tilmon hasn’t been as effective since returning. He has 37 points and 15 rebounds in four games — and zero rebounds before fouling out against Arkansas on Friday.
As Martin considered what MU might need to prevail, he didn’t hesitate to say that everything from broader shot selection to Tilmon’s own production has to “flow through him” and his own understanding of who he is to this team.
There will be more to it than that, of course, especially in a postseason setting no coach or team ever has encountered before.
But with the new beginning, Mizzou has a chance to write its own chapter in this unique moment in history as it stares down its recent past and steps back into its roots against OU. Within all that, now would be a fine time to declare that the future is now by winning this one.
This story was originally published March 14, 2021 at 9:12 PM.