A strong defensive first half wasn’t enough for the Tigers to earn their first SEC victory.
There were a number of unexpected events that took place during Feb. 20’s contest between No. 5 Tennessee, the highest ranked team in the SEC, and the Missouri Tigers, the conference’s bottom feeder.
The Tigers gave up just one basket in the game’s first eight minutes, held the SEC’s second-best scorer Dalton Knecht to just two first-half points and entered halftime with the lead.
The final score of 72-67 was also much closer than the expected outcome, but the Volunteers still came out on top.
“Our guys played hard,” Missouri head coach Dennis Gates said. “Our guys played really, really hard, especially in that first half.”
Missouri was led by 24 points from graduate guard Sean East II, who is averaging 24.5 points per game in his last two games since returning from injury. Graduate forward Noah Carter also notched 20 points — his fourth time reaching that mark this season.
The Tigers offense was brought down by a poor shooting night from junior guard Tamar Bates, who made just three of his 15 attempts from the field and was held to single-digit scoring for the first time since Missouri played Kansas on Dec. 9.
The game opened with neither team being able to do anything right offensively. Prior to the first made field goal of the game, which came courtesy of a dunk from Tennessee’s sixth-man, junior guard Jordan Gainey. At the 15:31 mark, the teams were a combined 0/10 from the field with seven turnovers.
While it took the Volunteers four-and-a-half minutes to score their first field goal of the game, the Tigers were held without a field goal for double that length of time. Bates was finally able to take the lid off the hoop with his lone three-pointer of the night, bumping the score to 7-5 at the 10:56 mark.
Although scoring opened up for both squads after the Bates three, neither team was able to take control of the game. Six lead changes occurred over the next five minutes.
With Missouri trailing by one and 4:05 remaining on the clock, East took the game into his own hands. The Tigers’ leading scorer scored nine of MU’s next 11 points, putting the Tigers ahead 29-26 as the halftime buzzer sounded.
After the break, Missouri’s success continued. Three-point baskets from Honor, East and Carter fueled a 13-9 run over the first four-minutes-and-37-seconds of the half that gave the Tigers their biggest lead of the night.
With Missouri up 44-39 and 13:24 remaining, projected NBA Draft pick Dalton Knecht finally came to life. Knecht, who was averaging 20.1 points per game entering the contest, had yet to make a field goal so far. The guard’s confidence never wavered, as he torched the Tiger defense for 15 of the Volunteers’ next 19 points.
“Dalton was what he was in that second half and he basically made some tough shots,” Gates said. “When you look at the difficulty of the shots he took, our guy’s hands was right there.”
Knecht would not score for the rest of the night, but the scoreboard had flipped in Tennessee’s favor for good. The six-point lead that he led his team to ballooned into a 13-point margin by the under-4 minute timeout.
Three-pointers from Carter and freshman Anthony Robinson II cut the gap to five as time expired, but Tennessee left Mizzou Arena with their 20th victory of the season.
The loss is the 13th consecutive defeat for Missouri and the 16th loss of their last 17 games. The Tigers now find themselves five losses away from the first winless SEC season since 2018-19.
Edited by Michael Stamps
Copy edited by Grace Knight | gknight@themaneater.com
Edited by Genevieve Smith | gsmith@themaneater.com