| 14 July 2009
But is this team really that much better than the teams Mizzou has had the past two years? The Illinois loss looked a lot like many of the losses we've seen the past few years but every team gets one pass on a game like that each year. For whatever reason the Tigers didn't show up that night. Completely inexcusable but you gotta think the best thing for us to do was to move on and try to forget about that one as soon as possible.
But after Saturday's embarrassing/pathetic/humiliating/sucky/shitty loss to Nebraska, I'm starting to believe that what happened against Illinois was not a fluke at all. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong in Lincoln.
I think this one falls more on the coaches than on the players. Ever since 2003 we've seen the Tigers repeatedly come out flat in big games, overlook lesser opponents and play careless and undisciplined basketball. The last couple years we've written it off as being a Quin problem. They learned how to lose on his watch and there was nothing Coach Anderson could do about it.
But what are we going to say now? These are MA's guys (minus Leo and Matt) and yet Saturday looked identical to any number of games I watched during the Snyder era. Is any progress being made on the court at all?
- I was as high as Aqib Talib on this year's freshman class after the Cal victory but I am ever so slowly starting to temper my expectations. I don't want to be too harsh on them because I understand that just about every freshman in the country goes through similar struggles each year and plenty of them end up being excellent players. But they're all starting to remind me a little too much of the infamous class of '04. Think about it. There was a pretty quick point guard (Jason Horton or MP3) who could hit an occasional 3-pointer but far too often fell in love with his shaky jumper. Also tended to dribble aimlessly much like MP3 has been doing lately. There was a power forward who seemed to be pretty strong and appeared capable of developing into a solid rebounder but had a limited offensive arsenal (Kalen Grimes/Laurence Bowers). A small forward who looked to be very versatile and capable of playing inside or outside but had a tendency to disappear in bigger games (Marshall Brown/Kim English). And finally, a supposedly lights out three-point shooter who was never able to hit any actual three-pointers (Glen Dandridge/Marcus Denmon).
- Speaking of Denmon's poor shooting; when is Mike Anderson going to give this guy the yellow light? He's shooting 27 percent from beyond the arc this season and yet there have been six games where he's shot at least four 3-pointers. I think his shot selection might be even more frustrating than Matt Lawrence's. Generally speaking, I think Matt shoots shots that are in rhythm. Denmon, on the other hand, has apparently never seen a shot he didn't like. It shouldn't be that hard for a Big 12 player to have some sort of idea about what the difference is between a shot that you get within the flow of the offense and a shot that you can get at any point during the possession. But Denmon doesn't look like he has a clue. That goes back to coaching.
- Apparently Zaire Taylor decided not to travel back to Missouri with the rest of the team after the Georgia game. Because Taylor was nothing but dead weight on the floor on Saturday afternoon. 19 minutes and not one shot attempt either from the field or the free throw line. That's hard to do. If you get over five minutes of playing time then you usually end up getting a shot off even if you're not looking for your shot. I know Zaire does a lot of things that aren't measured in a box score but he can't have games like he did on Saturday, especially when the team is so desperate for scoring. His defense is always solid but he literally brought nothing to the table against the Huskers when the Tigers had the ball. He obviously wasn't a threat to shoot from the perimeter so Nebraska was able to pack their defense in even more than they had probably planned on doing. He also was clearly not attacking the basket. If he was you would figure he would've gotten to the free throw line at least once. Earlier this year MizzouRah reader Wolf Stannson compared Zaire to Jimmy McKinney and I think that's a pretty good comparison. That can be a good thing and a bad thing. Both have very high basketball IQs and Taylor's offensive game seems to be very smooth and visually appealing, just like McKinney's was. McKinney also did a lot of things on offense that can't be measured statistically, like Taylor. But J-McK also had that tendency to follow a great game up with several where he became passive and would show no signs of aggressiveness with the ball. We're seeing Taylor do the same thing this year. It's not too hard for opposing teams to defend a player who isn't looking to score.
- I don't think there's any doubt left about what opposing teams have to do to completely derail our halfcourt offense. Simply pack it in, throw double-teams at DeMarre and hope Bad Leo shows up. Any hopes we had of Leo going through some sort of dramatic transformation in between his junior and senior seasons are starting to dissipate. He might still end up having a great year but we're going to have to put up with those stretches where he loses focus like he did in the first half on Saturday. And I love DeMarre and the effort that he plays with. But offensively, he is a very soft player. If he can't get points against Nebraska, and I don't care if he was quadruple-teamed, he's gonna struggle against a lot of Big 12 teams. I think he's struggled ever since I changed my profile pic to a picture of him:
So I've decided to change it to this awesome pic in honor of the stellar game Justin Gage played on Sunday:
Look at Clarance Gilbert's face. Even he can't believe how awesome Justin Gage is.
- If there's one thing that might be a little reassuring about this game—and I'm stretching here—it's that, for whatever reason, Doc Sadler has our number. He now sports a 5-1 record against us although one of those games should have an asterisk next to it because it was the first game that the Athena 5 were suspended for. Sometimes you have that situation where an oftentimes inferior team always plays out of its mind against an opponent. Look at how Florida State has played Duke the past several years.
- Bottom line: The Tournament is still well within reach for this team. It's going to take at least 10 more wins to lock up a one of the 64 spots. The first key to doing that will be taking care of business at home. Colorado, Iowa St., Texas Tech, Nebraska and K-State should be (emphasis on should be) wins. Win those and you're halfway there. The Tigers also shouldn't struggle at Colorado. That makes six wins and honestly, Mizzou should beat kU at least once this year. So if they win all the games they should win they will only have to win three of the following eight games: @Okie St., @K-State, Baylor, @Texas, @Iowa St., @kU, Oklahoma and @TAMU. Feasible enough. The only problem is I have very little confidence in the Tigers' ability to win every game that they should, which would put them in a position where they have to do something like beat OU or win at Allen Fieldhouse to lock up a Tournament spot (aka a big game, and we've seen how well they've fared in those).
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