On a normal day, ahead of a normal game, the walk to the Mizzou Arena media room has a certain serenity about it.
You walk in through the lobby and behind the arena’s suites. Typically the team is practicing behind those walls and down the lower bowl stairs, and the sounds slip through the open-air boxes. Squeaking sneakers on hardwood; the odd clank of errant attempts on iron; the ever-present hubbub of coaching and instruction and all that day-to-day, behind-the-scenes function of a Missouri basketball practice.
But not on Friday. Not remotely close.
Not when Border War is beckoning.
On Friday, there’s a loudspeaker working overtime somewhere on Norm Stewart Court. There is no echoing thud of dribbles. Those have all been replaced — overwhelmed — by the infused noise of jeers, whistles and cheers. The recording is blaring through the arena’s halls up and away from the floor, up through the suites and into that hallway. There is no sound but the mimicked sound of Sunday. The sound of war.
You know it. They know it. Everyone who has been a part of it knows, too.
So, when the prerecorded crowd noise ceases and the MU coach comes to talk, you best believe Dennis Gates knows it now, too.
“The Border War is not just a normal game,” the Missouri head coach said. “We never treat it that way. Our fanbase is going to be excited. The history of the two programs back in the Big Eight days into the Big 12 days and even now as we represent the SEC, is still alive. And ultimately, when you look at former coaches, former players, former students, former employees, their memories of Mizzou basketball revolves around this game. So, that is understood.
“Our guys understand it from a historical perspective. Our guys have been prepared to know what it means to our fanbase, but also what it’s going to mean to them.”
It’s Border War weekend. Missouri basketball will play No. 1-ranked Kansas on Sunday at Mizzou Arena for the fourth edition of the revived, historic, often-hostile rivalry. It will be the 271st time the two teams have faced off dating back to 1907.
Since the rivalry returned, the last three results have gone the way of the Jayhawks, and often in fairly convincing fashion. Can Sunday be any different? Can Mizzou — for the first time in 12 years, when the pair were Big 12 enemies — get one over on its not-so-amicable neighbor to the west?
There’s a sense, this season, that Gates and his Tigers are leaning in.
I asked Gates two years ago how he was readying himself for his first Border War, which was Dec. 11, 2022. His answer:
“I’ve prepared for my first year. I don’t look at it as one game,” Gates said. … “There’s several games before, there’s several games afterward. I have to make sure the mental, physical and emotional growth of my team is going in the direction that will allow us a successful season.”
Mizzou lost 95-67 in Columbia.
I asked Gates on Friday if he’s leaned on anyone ahead of this game this year, two years down the line and two Border War losses later. The start of his answer:
“I lean on Norm Stewart for my stories,” Gates said, “and we all know how Norm Stewart feels.”
Has that been imparted on the players?
Missouri guard Tamar Bates said he expects Stewart, now 89 and in the Hall of Famous Missourians, to be at Mizzou’s team practice Saturday. Laurence Bowers, now on staff with Missouri athletics, has sent a text to the team about the game shortly after the Tigers beat Cal, Bates added.
That’s because there is little that means more to Missouri fans, and eventually the players, than this rivalry. Who among the Columbia faithful has forgotten Marcus Denmon taking over late in 2012? Or Zaire Taylor’s last-second winner that brought the fans on the court in 2009? Or the 1999 win in Allen Fieldhouse, Stewart’s last year as MU’s coach, that still stands as MU’s last victory in that building?
For most of the Mizzou roster, this will be the first time. Not Bates. The Kansas City, Kansas, native played in the Tigers’ loss in the Phog last season. The guard has done it once now, and said he’d “be a fool to sit here and act like it’s just a regular game.”
“I mean it’s just as serious to the players as it is to the fans,” Bates added. “I mean, obviously, the fans get a little bit more into it, or provocative, for lack of a better word. But I mean, we, I mean we just hooping, but obviously, it’s a really competitive game all the time. It’s fun for us.”
Newcomer Mark Mitchell, also a Kansas City, Kansas, native, has been through this. OK, not exactly this game. But, he played in Cameron Indoor Stadium for Duke against North Carolina. He’s heard the sounds of hostility. He remembers watching — perhaps shield your eyes now, MU fans — Thomas Robinson and those pre-SEC Mizzou teams when he was younger, and he’s glad to have it back.
What’s this one going to be like?
“I’m not sure yet. I haven’t played the game, but I think all rivalry games have a different type of energy, different type of feeling in the air,” Mitchell said. … “All things go out the window — records, status, whatever it is. We’re just two teams that have some animosity against each other, playing each other.”
Mitchell’s right, even if he hasn’t quite seen it yet. There is a different type of feeling in the air when Border War tips.
The preparatory sounds that echoed through the Mizzou Arena hallways Friday pale in comparison.
It’s Missouri versus still-No. 1-ranked Kansas.
It’s Border War.
And Missouri is leaning in.
“Most of our fans were born into it on both sides, right? They carry it with pride,” Gates said. “I truly believe it’s one of the best basketball rivalries out there. It may not get the same respect, but it is. We know what it means to the fanbase. We know what it means to the current students. It’s just not a normal game. It’s not. We’re not going to treat it that way. They’re not going to treat it that way. They won’t ever do that.
“So for us, I just think when you look at the history, you’ve got to respect the history, and it’s something that we all signed up for.”
