Thirty seconds remaining, a 12-point lead. All Keith Shamburger had to do was run out the clock.
“Finally,” Missouri coach Kim Anderson said after his team’s second win in 2015.
Spot on, Coach.
After opening conference play with a 70-67 overtime win over Louisiana State on Jan. 8, Missouri came into Tuesday’s match against Florida with a school-record 13 straight losses.
What do teams do when they’re in a tough stretch? Change things up. What did Missouri do differently this week?
“We had shorter practices,” freshman guard Montaque Gill-Caesar said.
Go figure — it was that simple all along.
Oh, and freshman guard Namon Wright also may have had something to do with it.
“I was actually questioning if he was going to miss,” Gill-Caesar said.
Wright had the strongest individual performance the Tigers have seen all season, shooting 10-for-13 from the field and 6-for-8 from three-point range en route to a career-high 28 points.
“Namon carried us,” Anderson said. “(He) made shots.”
Wright had 14 points in the second half, going toe-to-toe with Florida’s 21 second-half points as a team. Wright and his teammates passed the ball around with the sort of ease often seen in a street game, looking as loose as they have in quite some time.
“We played well as a team,” Wright said. “We were having fun out there.”
Fellow freshman forward Jakeenan Gant had some fun of his own, recording all three of the Tigers’ blocks and grabbing six defensive rebounds. Anderson applauded the team’s defensive effort, which resulted in a 20-3 Missouri run late in the second half.
With under 10 minutes to go, several calls went against Mizzou, a frequent occurrence that would usually be the start of the team’s second-half collapse.
But not on Tuesday. Down 45-42, the Tigers didn’t let up.
“We didn’t give up,” Gill-Caesar said. “We grew up today.”
The Tigers would allow the Gators to score just seven points in the final 13 minutes, ending a 48-day losing streak spanning back to that Jan. 8 win against LSU. It was as much a sigh of relief as it was excitement for the born-again winners.
“Even in pickup games I’d be in a fight before the 14th game if I lost 13 in a row,” Anderson joked. “This has been miserable. It’s been hard for me and hard for them.”
Anderson’s mantra since early December has been that the Tigers “just need something good to happen.”
It’s safe to say that happened Tuesday.
“We went out there and we made something good happen,” he said. “I’m happy for our guys. They can finally lift their hats walking around campus and not bury their faces in their ski masks. They can be proud of what they accomplished.”
But Anderson’s not satisfied with ending the streak and calling it a year.
“I want to see Namon go out there and score 28 again,” he said with a smile. “There’s still a lot of season left. I want to go out there and get another win.”
Missouri’s shot at going back-to-back comes Saturday, when the team travels to Athens, Georgia to face the Bulldogs.