Missouri men’s basketball fell to 1-1 after losing to UMKC 80-66 at Mizzou Arena Monday night. Here are three takeaways from the Tiger’s first loss of the season:
Offensive struggles cause for concern
Missouri entered the game with confidence after defeating Central Michigan last week 78-68, but Monday’s matchup with UMKC proved to be a different ball game.
While the Tigers boasted a 33% clip from deep on 27 attempts against Central Michigan, Missouri only posted a 28.6% three point percentage on 14 attempts against UMKC.
Missouri’s offense appeared stagnant throughout the night and seemed to rely too heavily on its primary ball handlers driving into the paint. While junior guard Javon Pickett and junior forward Kobe Brown are key components of this offense, their contributions seemed forced as the offense never seemed to find any rhythm.
“I thought we held the ball too long,” head coach Cuonzo Martin said. “We didn’t utilize the ball screen from the bigs and attacking from that standpoint.”
The Tigers also appeared to force the action too much, especially in the first half. Missouri scored 23 points in the first half, followed by 43 in the second and turned the ball over 18 times.
Defense shows flashes, but fails to convince
Allowing 80 points to a mid-major UMKC team at home doesn’t scream the makings of a good defense. But that large number put up by the visiting Roos is mainly attributed to graduate guard Evan Gilyard II, who put up 28 points on the Tiger defense and shot 6-8 for three.
“We let him [Gilyard II] go left,” Pickett said. “He was knocking down shots all over.”
Outside of Gilyard II’s strong performance, the rest of UMKC shot 18-40 from the field and 5-15 from three, meaning the 80 points could be a misrepresentation of the defense the Tigers have.
The Tigers also struggled with defensive rebounding. Missouri rarely lost jump balls near the basket, instead allowing long rebounds off UMKC’s many three-point attempts.
“They didn’t really go to the glass that much,” Pickett said. “It just came down to grit. We got to go hit somebody.”
Despite losing the rebound battle and allowing such a high shooting percentage from deep, the night felt like an outlier for the defense. Gilyard II hit shot after shot for UMKC and when a player missed, someone else in blue and gold often hauled in the rebound. The Roos came up with seven second chance points off of six offensive rebounds.
On Monday, Gilyard II’s talent simply caused the Tigers too many issues.
Does the UMKC loss raise structural issues?
Now with an early season loss to a non Power-5 opponent, a question about the makeup of this team starts to arise — what the team’s structure is going to be?
Missouri plays without a true point guard and a true ‘big man.’ The team also lacks structure in its starting five — Martin decided to start four guards and one forward Monday. Despite having four guards on the floor at one time, the lone forward, Brown, often found himself taking up the ball and running the offense a good chunk of the game.
Although one of the Tigers’ best and most experienced players, Brown running the offense creates an awkward dynamic and spacing on the floor. Without a true floor general who takes up the ball and sets up the offense and a true big man to play down low to allow for spacing on the outside, Missouri appeared discombobulated at times.
Another possible problem with the roster is the lack of contribution from the bench. Outside of sophomore forward Ronnie Degray III, the bench contributed just five points. If the Tigers want to stick in ball games this year, Martin’s substitutions have to make plays on both offense and defense and give the starters a rest.
Edited by Kyle Pinnell, kpinnell@themaneater.com
