Missouri basketball fans could not have been any more ready for last Friday’s Black & Gold scrimmage. It offered the first glimpse of the new coach, the new team and the new look of the Missouri Tigers.
The anxiety was understandable, given how many facets the fans have been nervously questioning since last season’s end: their former coach, their new one, their conference allegiance and, most popularly as of late, their new power forward after Laurence Bowers’ season-ending ACL tear.
And filling the void of 6-foot, 6-inch Laurence Bowers at power forward is…
_Kim English?_
The idea of moving a 1,000-point scorer and senior shooting guard to power forward came out of left field. That the decision registered on the Richter Scale highlights just how desperate coach Frank Haith and the Tigers are to patch-work their disaster of a frontcourt.
Will it work? If Friday’s scrimmage was any indication, the answer is yes, but we all know an inter-squad scrimmage is just an inter-squad scrimmage.
Even still, the show English put on Friday draped a lighter onto a skyline of darkness. The senior guard cut to the basket, posted up and simply left defenders in the dust en route to 27 points, including 5-of-8 from three-point territory.
Scoring is the potential English brings to such an unnatural position. He has the height to work inside on defenders, and almost nobody will be able to keep pace with his moves down low. If he is able to pull big men to the perimeter, he’ll establish an easier job for rebounds and inside scoring for Missouri’s one true big man, senior center Ricardo Ratliffe.
Of course, this potential is incredibly dependent upon which version of Kim English we’ll see this season. The way-too-often shooter who struggled his way to 36 percent shooting last season stood in disappointing contrast to the animal that came alive in the NCAA Tournament the previous two seasons, each of which featured better than 38 percent shooting. The dropoff in efficiency resulted in a dip in English’s scoring from 14 points per game in 2009 to a measly 10 PPG in 2010.
“(Last season) was the most disappointing, sad, frustrating, mad, upsetting, losing year of my life,” English said at Big 12 Media Day.
English has by all accounts appeared a determined player this past off-season and emerged in impressive form Friday night. Needless to say, Missouri is counting on him. In fact, he was the key to the season even before the move to a new, ever more important position.
It’s no secret that lengthier Big 12 teams such as Kansas, Texas and Texas A&M are going to pound it inside on the Tigers. They did exactly that last year in the Tigers fade down the stretch. It was the Achilles’ Heel of Mike Anderson’s “Fastest 40 Minutes” and will likely be the team’s weakness in the first year under Haith.
Nobody can realistically expect English to match up in rebounding or defense with the other post men of the conference. What Missouri needs from him is the scoring touch he’s capable of at a position that doesn’t boast the athleticism to shut a good shooting game down. Missouri desperately needs Kim English to become that threat to drag attention away from the interior.
You know Kim English is going to shoot the ball. The Tigers need him to get back to making those shots.
It could define the entire season.