Why Mizzou’s loss to Kansas still marked progress for the Tigers under Dennis Gates
Including three wins when he was at Illinois, Kansas coach Bill Self now is 22-4 against Missouri after the second-ranked Jayhawks fended off the Tigers 73-64 on Saturday at Allen Fieldhouse.
Safe to say it won’t ever get old.
“The food tastes better and the drink is colder later in the evening after you beat Missouri,” Self said, smiling.
Even so, this day wasn’t just the same old story for Mizzou, which fell to 7-3 as KU improved to 9-1.
While no moral victory, MU absolutely gritted out a stride forward — albeit one that can only really be apparent and meaningful if it transforms the lessons of the day into something more.
On a day Kansas reiterated its place among college basketball’s elite, Mizzou reaffirmed that it’s building a program under second-year coach Dennis Gates, who last season guided the Tigers to their first NCAA Tournament victory since 2010.
Take it from none other than Self, whose Jayhawks had clobbered MU by 37 and 28 points in the last two meetings since the dormant rivalry was resumed two seasons ago.
“I thought Missouri did a great job of making the game the way it needed to be to give them the best chance to win,” said Self, who called Gates “terrific” and said he’s doing a “fantastic” job.
Being able to do that started with the evident infusion of poise that enabled Mizzou to seize an early lead and hold it for almost the entire first 16 minutes — on its way to forcing 16 Kansas turnovers in the game.
“They do such a good job of disrupting you and not letting you run plays and get set up and things like that,” Self said. “So you’ve got to rely on … players to make plays rather than run plays.”
Kansas, of course, has the talent to do that. And, to be sure, MU blinked when KU swarmed at the end of the first half with a 20-2 run.
That proved decisive but, against well-established gravity here, not a knockout blow as MU later cut an 18-point KU lead to under double-digits for most of the last three minutes.
Because this wasn’t remotely the same flustered group that came to Allen Fieldhouse two years ago or flinched at Mizzou Arena a year ago — a game that nonetheless helped Gates’ first team be braced for the brighter lights ahead in the annual Braggin’ Rights Game with Illinois in St. Louis, against visiting Kentucky days later and on into a tournament resume and NCAA play.
Then again, one of the reasons MU didn’t get rattled was the result of largely muzzling any Kansas flow or rhythm.
The crowd was great, Self said, but it “wasn’t a factor in the game because I don’t think our play was good enough to allow them to be a factor like they were against Connecticut.”
Since Kansas is of course well-coached and plenty more talented than Missouri, it wore down the Tigers in any number of ways: KU outscored MU 17-0 (!) in second-chance points, 42-28 in the paint and outrebounded Missouri 42-25.
But here’s what some of what Mizzou could take away from this:
If it had converted those 16 turnovers into more than nine points, if it hadn’t missed several wide-open 3-pointers and a couple lobs in the first half and hadn’t committed a three-shot foul less than a second before halftime, the dynamics of the second half would have been entirely different.
That doesn’t mean Missouri would thus have won, of course. And Kansas obviously can point to a few things it could have cleaned up in handling the ball or with shot selection that could have put it out of reach.
But this still says something about MU’s progress and Gates as a motivator and strategist.
While it’s well-understood that he’s a recruiting dynamo, who has a top-10 recruiting class coming in next year, it’s also clear he’s still doing more with less in what remains the embryonic stages of building a program that’s been in flux for more than a decade.
After the game, he considered how long Self has been at Kansas — a tenure, it might be noted, all the more stabilized from the get-go by the previous regime of Roy Williams.
Those 20-plus seasons for Self, Gates correctly said, have an impact on everything from recruiting to culture.
Meanwhile, Gates is in his fifth year as a head coach and acknowledges he still has “growth in my path” to what he often says he plans to make a Hall of Fame career.
“Hopefully in the future, I’ll be here for 20 years,” he said. “And we can see the same success that Coach Self has had here, and we can have it at Mizzou. And I truly believe that we can.”
That’s a lofty notion, and “can” is different than will. And if it’s going to become anything resembling that, well, it will mean needing to beat Kansas a representative amount of times in the process.
But MU added some brick and mortar to the process on Saturday by revealing itself to be tough-minded, smart and resourceful in one of the most challenging environments imaginable.
No, it wasn’t a victory, but it could well be indicative of — and even part of — something more ahead. This season, yes, but over the long haul.