Loss to Oklahoma makes Mizzou’s last NCAA Tournament win more remote, next uncertain
Three coaches, 11 years and a few marketing campaigns back, the Missouri men’s basketball team playing the so-called “fastest 40 minutes in basketball” under Mike Anderson won its fourth NCAA Tournament game in two seasons — and the ninth for MU since the turn of the century.
After that 86-78 win over Clemson in Buffalo, Anderson shrugged off that team’s late-season funk and said, “When you get to tournament play, they understand: It’s about energy now. It ain’t the X’s and O’s. It’s who wants it the most.”
If that sounded too simple, well, it all seemed so simple before what would fade into the longest 11 years in the modern era of Missouri men’s basketball history.
Instead of Mizzou remaining a perennial presence in March Madness, that victory was the last hurrah in what for a once-prominent program has become an exasperating run of NCAA Tournament futility — including being one of the few No. 2 seeds to lose to a No. 15 (Norfolk State in 2012).
And what once was common, if not quite taken for granted at a school with its fair share of first-round heartbreaks, seemed all the more remote on Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium: Ninth-seeded Mizzou lost 72-68 to eighth-seeded Oklahoma for the program’s sixth straight NCAA tourney defeat in just its third appearance since 2013.
The defeat completed a somewhat inexplicable season-ending skid for a Tigers team that had three wins over top-10 teams, including beating a future No. 1 seed in Illinois, and went 9-4 against NCAA Tournament teams but ultimately lost seven of its last 10.
Asked how to account for that afterward, MU coach Cuonzo Martin pointed to what he called “a little bit of this or that.”
Then he noted the three-game losing streak that started the descent and included Jeremiah Tilmon missing two games on a leave of absence following a death in the family.
Mizzou, he said, “just never really got over the hump consistently” again after that.
To be sure … even if just why really remains unclear.
But wherever it all went awry, this NCAA loss came with its own distinctly anguishing ending.
Not just because MU couldn’t even generate a three-point shot down 70-67 in the final seconds after the Herculean Dru Smith’s two threes and a defensive stop in the final minute had given them a last chance.
The end also stung because this was a veteran team in Martin’s fourth season, a team featuring five seniors and others who may have played their last game.
That makes for both a certain extra devastation among them even while it also prompts the question of … if not now, when, will Mizzou resume having a program that regularly wins tournament games?
Reflecting on his career after the game, Tilmon said he was proud of having been part of turning around the program and building a culture and hopes it continues from here.
In fact, Tilmon isn’t wrong about what’s happened the last few years even if it’s not particularly satisfying without the tournament wins that resonate most as a gauge of a program.
MU is 66-56 under Martin after going 27-68 the three previous seasons. It’s 30-40 in Southeastern Conference play after having been 8-46. Meanwhile, Martin has proven himself to be exactly the sort of man of integrity and conscience you want as the face of your program.
But, geez, a first NCAA Tournament win at Missouri could have gone a long way towards appeasing a grumbling fan base and creating credibility momentum toward the future.
And, mercy, this was a ripe opportunity against an OU team that had lost five of its last six and was without its second-leading scorer, De’Vion Harmon, after he tested positive for COVID-19.
For a while on Saturday, at least, it appeared MU would finally put an end to the protracted dry spell.
Playing on the north court of cavernous Lucas Oil Stadium, where Texas and Abilene Christian were soon to play on the south court, Mizzou was seeking to end its longest NCAA Tournament victory drought since the void between 1944 and 1976.
The Tigers got just the sort of jump-start they might have wanted against the Sooners, grabbing a 14-7 lead with Tilmon asserting his presence inside for two of MU’s first three buckets and Mark Smith making his first two three-pointers after having hit just 2 of his previous 17.
After hitting 6 of its first 7 field goals, though Mizzou made only 5 of its next 27 (!) and seemed lucky to still be in the game by early in the second half.
But Dru Smith kept MU afloat with two sets of two three-pointers in quick succession, the second of which came with under a minute left to cut it to 70-67.
When he pried the ball loose from Austin Reaves on the other end with 17 seconds left, Mizzou figured to have a legitimate chance to tie.
But Kobe Brown passed up what would have been a contested three, and the scrambled offensive sequence ended with Drew Buggs being fouled as he drove with 2 seconds left.
Buggs made the first and intentionally missed the second. But Jalen Hill rebounded for OU and made both free throws after Brown had fouled him.
And that was that, yet again.
Harkening back to the simpler times of 2010, the Tigers surely didn’t lose because they didn’t want it bad enough. They also didn’t lose because they weren’t good enough.
They lost because they simply couldn’t find a way to come through in the moment on this stage, alas, making for all the more distance between the last time they did and leaving open to conjecture when it might finally again be otherwise.
This story was originally published March 20, 2021 at 10:25 PM.