Missouri rolled to its second straight easy victory on Friday night, blowing out the Pacific Tigers 91-56. Mizzou is now 4-1 on the season and plays Arkansas-Pine Bluff at 4:00 Sunday. Here are some quick thoughts immediately after the game ended.
*I’ve been waiting to see something that would indicate this team might be significantly better than I’ve thought. Drew King and I were talking right before tipoff and we both agreed Pacific was good enough that this one had a chance to be a Jackson State game. After a 7-2 start where Mizzou’s players looked about as into the game as the dozens of fans in the building, the Tigers ran away and hid. Missouri outscored Pacific 52-24 the rest of the half with six different players making threes and the Tigers running up and down the floor in waves. Now, look, Pacific isn’t a great basketball team (I say this knowing that in ten minutes Dennis Gates is going to tell me they’ll make the NCAA Tournament), but they’re not awful. They’re a lot better than Mississippi Valley State or Arkansas-Pine Bluff. On the wrong day, they can do enough to scare, and maybe even beat, a bad high-major team. Missouri didn’t let that happen. Again, I’m not going to make snap judgments about this team based on the current assembly line of cupcakes it’s playing, but this was the first time since the first half against Memphis where I thought I might need to adjust my expectations upward.
*This team continues to get to the free throw line. It was a somewhat big problem in Gates’ first season and it was a gigantic problem last season. Gates talked about it a lot (to the point that everyone got annoyed by it) but I give him credit for going out and doing something about it. He seems to have identified players who can get in the lane and seek contact. Shooting as many free throws as Missouri does (over 30 a game coming in; 23 tonight) can make up for a lot of other problems. For example at the under 12 timeout Mizzou was shooting 20% from the floor and was in a tie game because it had already gone to the line six times and made all six. It’s basically the Texas A&M approach. Maybe we can’t shoot, but we’re gonna get to the line and get enough free points to make up for the fact that we can’t shoot (and I think this team can shoot a lot better than most A&M teams).
