Missouri head coach Cuonzo Martin will never admit it. He’s a religious “one game at a time” coach, drilling into his players’ heads that no one game, no one result is bigger than the next or the last.
“You’ll probably get tired of me,” Martin said. “They’re all big.”
His jittery yet confident body language, beaming smile and laughter when a reporter echoed his “Mr. North-South” nickname for junior guard Xavier Pinson and heightened tone of voice told a different story.
As did his reaction when redshirt senior guard Dru Smith’s tough reverse layup rattled into the basket with 0.7 seconds left in the game to give Missouri a 2-point lead and eventually a 72-70 road win over Florida Wednesday night.
Look how fired up Zo is when this goes in. Love our coach, man.
— Shawn Davis (@ShawnTD77) March 4, 2021
The layup added another signature win over a tournament team to Missouri’s resume. It joins a neutral-site win over Oregon, home wins over No. 4 Illinois (technically neutral-site game but it happened at Mizzou Arena) and No. 8 Alabama, and road wins over No. 12 Arkansas and Tennessee.
The Tigers moved to 15-7 on the season, and crucially, 8-7 in conference play. Missouri cannot finish higher than fifth in the SEC — that ship sailed over the last few weeks — but Wednesday night’s victory could help them earn a favorable matchup in the first round of the conference tournament.
“We weren’t bad, we just weren’t clicking on all cylinders,” Martin said. “It wasn’t like it was four or five glaring things where we can’t do anything about it. Like I said, ‘Guys, let’s correct what we need to correct, be the team we need to be,’ and I think our guys showed that for the most part tonight.”
Missouri was the team that it needed to be in the first half, at least when it comes to Martin’s vision for it. As a defensive-minded coach, 15 Florida turnovers in the first half alone must have made Martin ecstatic.
The Tigers had eight steals in the first half, five of which came from Dru Smith, and allowed only 29 points.
“That’s what’s expected from me every night,” Dru Smith said. “If I don’t do that, then it’ll look like I’m not playing hard.”
Some of those turnovers were careless mistakes by the Gators, but others were the result of attacking defense and sound fundamentals — the Tigers’ brand when they were successful early in the season.
Much of what went wrong in the slump could have been attributed to the Tigers losing their identity.
“We play with a different pace offensively, we get up and down the floor, and that’s fine and dandy, but we still have to defend, man,” Martin said. “You have to defend, you have to rebound, you have to play as hard as you can play … I don’t know about other teams, but we have to do that in order to be a good team.”
Also part of the Tigers’ identity: not making it easy on themselves.
Missouri took a 70-62 lead on a Mitchell Smith three-pointer with 2:27 left, and at this point, it was not hard to predict what was about to happen. Florida roared back to tie it with a jumper here, a missed Jeremiah Tilmon layup there and a couple of unnecessary fouls including one that took Tilmon out of the game.
“Tilmon missed the layup, they didn’t get back on D, and all of a sudden they get a basket and change the game,” Martin said, “That can’t happen. We gotta finish the basketball game.”
Even with the narrower-than-necessary finish, Missouri can take positives from Wednesday night’s game beyond just picking up the win.
Senior guard Mark Smith continued to rebound from being borderline unplayable and once again looked like a solid starter. With Tilmon and sophomore forward Kobe Brown in constant foul trouble, Mitchell “The Credit Card” Smith stepped up in a big way, scoring 14 points and hitting two of his three long-balls.
The latter showcased his increased confidence from beyond the arc since he elicited “Stop shooting!” tirades from fans at the Kentucky game on Feb. 3. When he released it from the top of the key, he put his arms down almost immediately and started backpedaling — a sure sign that he knew exactly where it was headed.
“I think you could tell watching the game, if something didn’t go our way, we were back in the huddle,” Mitchell Smith said. “We were more in-tune tonight.”
Above all, Missouri just needed this win. It had been a little under a month since the Tigers beat a good or even mediocre team, and to do it on the road made it even sweeter.
“We talk a lot about road wins, man, it’s not easy to win on the road against a very talented, well-coached team,” Martin said. “It’s a great feeling, man. Jeremiah fouls out, other guys stay the course. When Jeremiah was out, we went up.”
The Tigers desperately needed something — anything — to boost their confidence and their seeding heading into the SEC tournament. They got it, and they’re rushing back home to prepare to do it again.
“They were jumping my gun in the locker room,” Martin said. “I just said, ‘Stack it up guys, get out of here as fast as we can, We want to take it back, so let’s get outta here’.”
_Edited by Anna Cowden | acowden@themaneater.com_
