After a momentous win over No. 6 Illinois on Dec. 12, Missouri men’s basketball followed it up with its worst shooting performance of the season in a narrow, ugly win over Bradley.
The Tigers knocked off another 6th-ranked team last Saturday — this time a revenge win over Tennessee — and followed it up with a markedly better shooting performance than the Bradley game, but fell on the road to Auburn 88-82.
Many expected Auburn to give No. 12 Missouri a run for its money because of five-star freshman Sharife Cooper.
The highly-touted recruit from Powder Springs, Ga. balled out in his sixth game of the season with 28 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. He played an integral part on both sides of the court and gave Missouri fits when he wasn’t in foul trouble
“Give credit to Sharife Cooper, he’s a talented young player who does a great job of getting in lane,” Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin said. “He puts you in tough positions and even does a good job for his size and finishing at the rim with bigger guys. He keeps his head up so he’s always looking for his guys, even when he’s attacking the rim.”
Missouri climbed up to No. 12 in the AP Top 25, but did not look like a championship contender. The Tigers just shot 1-6 from the field with four fouls and three turnovers four minutes into the game.
Martin had to burn a timeout after Auburn created separation with an 8-0 run propelled by Cooper and unlikely contributor Chris Moore — a freshman forward averaging 2.9 points per game entering Tuesday’s game — who scored six of his 11 points in the run.
By the halfway mark of the first half, Missouri was in a double-digit hole thanks to Auburn’s smothering defense. Sophomore center Babatunde Akingbola controlled the paint with three blocks early and Missouri couldn’t make any baskets inside. With Missouri shooting just 2-11 from 3 in the first half, the visitors desperately needed all the points they could get inside.
“The ones I watched from the sidelines, most of them we didn’t go up strong,” Martin said. “We didn’t go up finishing the ball, we didn’t make contact and keep our heads up finishing.”
At the under-eight minute timeout, Missouri was shooting 22% from the field and 1-9 from 3-point range. The percentages were reminiscent of the Bradley game, one in which the offense was stagnant and baskets came few and far between.
However, things were about to take a turn for the visiting Tigers late in the first half.
Missouri mounted a comeback once Auburn coach Bruce Pearl benched Cooper late in the first half with three fouls. A 7-0 run pulled Missouri within two possessions of the lead before half as the home Tigers became lifeless on offense and the visiting Tigers found their groove.
Meanwhile, without Cooper, Auburn was drastically limited in its ability to drive and kick or swing the ball.
Missouri regained its lead on a 10-2 run in the opening 2:43 of the second half. Its first lead since a free throw from junior guard Xavier Pinson put the Tigers up 1-0 in the opening moments. The visitors swung the momentum with several big plays with two 3-pointers and a clutch and-1 layup from redshirt senior guard Dru Smith at the 15:24 mark in the second half.
“I think earlier in the season when we played Tennessee, we got down early kind of like that,” Smith said. “It was a little bit more and we weren’t able to bounce back, so we had responded this time and even got the lead back so that’s one positive thing.”
But once Cooper returned, so did Auburn’s offensive prowess.
The guard went on a 6-0 run by himself with three gritty layups, going directly into senior forward Jeremiah Tilmon, hitting a floater in the paint then taking contact from Dru Smith on the drive. Auburn never relinquished control from there.
Xavier Pinson fouled out with 6:01 remaining and Cooper continued to draw fouls 20 feet away from the basket, which allowed him to rack up free throws at a rapid rate. By the time the buzzer sounded, Cooper attempted 21 free throws and made 18 of them.
“We want to be intense on the defensive and kind of up in you,” Smith said. “But we have to adjust to how the game is being called. We have to do better, especially there in the second half, just trying to make those adjustments, keeping our hands out and making straight up plays at the rim.”
Back-to-back rejections from Auburn — two of its 13 on the night — sealed Missouri’s fate only to be followed by a thunderous dunk by sophomore guard Allen Flanigan to add insult to injury.
The second top-10 win for Missouri this season led to a similarly inconsistent shooting performance the following game. The difference between the Bradley game and the Auburn game was that Bradley did not have Sharife Cooper on its roster.
Unfortunately for Missouri, Auburn did.
_Edited by Kyle Pinnell | kpinnell@themaneater.com_
