About halfway through the second half of Missouri women’s basketball’s first exhibition game of the year, senior guard Sydney Crafton finally came back to earth.
Crafton had made nine straight shots from the field and added five free throws before she finally missed. Crafton finished 11 for 12 with 28 points in Missouri’s 75-50 win over Division II Lincoln Tuesday night.
Although Crafton excelled, the rest of the Tigers struggled, especially in the first half. At one point, with just over three minutes to go before halftime, the combined Missouri was shooting 35 percent, but if Crafton’s shots were taken out, the Tigers would’ve been at 17 percent. Once the Tigers settled down, they regained their shooting form, finishing the game with a 47 percent clip.
“Other than setting the game back 20 years for the first 30 minutes, I saw some good things out of our team,” coach Robin Pingeton said. “We got better as the game went on.”
Senior guard Liene Priede, who was second on the team with 11 points, wasn’t too worried about the young team’s struggles in its first game situation.
“I think it’s because it’s our first game,” Priede said. “We have a lot of new players.”
Pingeton only started one underclassman, a demographic that makes up 75 percent of the team. 4:14 into the game, at the first media timeout, Pingeton subbed in five new players. For much of the first half, Missouri juggled lineup options.
“I think that a lot of what you saw tonight in that first half, when you rotate in and out like that, the amount of players that we’re rotating in and out, from media timeout to media timeout, I think it’s hard to get comfortable out there,” Pingeton said. “I thought that in the second half it got much, much better.”
After the early struggles, Pingeton needed to right the ship for a team where six players were making their collegiate debuts.
“I think it’s more about calming myself down and just reminding myself to be patient because we step between the lines and we’re all so driven and we want perfectionism, Pingeton said. “We want excellence, we want execution, but there’s a fine line there because you don’t want your team to use it as a crutch; that we’re so young and inexperienced. I will not allow them to use that as an excuse.”
Although Crafton’s burst was more than enough for Missouri to cruise past Lincoln, she knows that she can’t rely on career nights all of the time.
“I didn’t expect 28 points, but I think we all need to score,” Crafton said. “It doesn’t matter if I average 20 points per game. I think it would help if all of us have 10, 12, 13 here and there. Coach P said it before: it’s easy to guard one player, but it’s hard to guard six or seven players who all have 10, 12 points.”
Missouri wraps up their two-game stretch of exhibition games with an election night special Nov. 6 against Lindenwood at Mizzou Arena. After Lindenwood, the Tigers will start their regular season the following Friday against Saint Louis.