COLUMBIA, Mo. — After suffering their third consecutive defeat in losing Saturday’s regular-season finale, two Missouri men’s basketball captains took to the Mizzou Arena public address system to try to inspire some confidence in their fans.
Mizzou coach Dennis Gates handed a microphone to his captains after Saturday’s senior day ceremony to allow them a chance to thank a sellout crowd following their last MU game played in Columbia. They expressed gratitude, certainly, especially for the fans who forgave last season’s struggles to enjoy this season’s turnaround. But they also acknowledged the recent dip in form that has soured a special season into something a little more worrisome over the past few weeks.
“Don’t give up on us,†walk-on captain Jeremy Sanchez said.
“We’ve got a lot of basketball left to play,†guard Tamar Bates said.
The No. 15 Tigers, who finished the regular season 21-10 overall and 10-8 in Southeastern Conference play, control exactly how much basketball they have left. The fun — and the thrill, chaos and madness — of postseason basketball is in its deceptive simplicity. Want to keep playing? Keep winning.
MU has, at minimum, two guaranteed games left this season: one each in the SEC and NCAA tournaments. Given the successes of a six-week hot streak in January and early February, however, the hope around Mizzou is that there’s more than that available.
The Tigers’ spot in the 68-team NCAA Tournament field will be clarified next Sunday. As things stand at the end of the regular season, Missouri is balancing on the line between being a No. 5 or No. 6 seed.
Whichever MU lands, it likely will be favored in its first-round matchup, but the distinction between the seeds is important. No. 5 seeds face 12 seeds, which often are mid-major conference champions. No. 6 seeds face slumping power conference programs that eked their way into the field — think Oklahoma in the SEC, or Ohio State and Indiana out of the Big Ten.
But that competition is more than a week away. In the meantime, Mizzou will trek over to Nashville, Tennessee, for the maiden 16-team SEC tournament.
Missouri finished seventh in the conference, which allows it to bypass the first round and begin tourney play at 6 p.m. Thursday in the second round. The Tigers’ half of the SEC bracket could shake out quite favorably if they’re up for a postseason run.
MU’s first game will be against the winner of the game Wednesday between 10th-place Mississippi State (20-11 overall, 8-10 SEC) and 15th-place Louisiana State (14-17, 3-15).
The Bulldogs are the far more likely team to be Missouri’s opponent, given that they beat LSU 81-69 on March 1 — and had a far better season than the purple-and-yellow Tigers did.
Which becomes MU’s opponent shouldn’t matter all that much: Mizzou beat LSU by 16 points at home and Mississippi State by 27 points on the road in the regular season.
But Missouri’s home-stretch struggles interject an asterisk there: The Tigers did not beat any team twice this season. There were only three chances to do so, in fairness, and all three were on the road. But Mizzou lost its rematches with Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Oklahoma within the final five games of the regular season.
Given that everyone in the SEC has played each other at least once, part of the key to success in the conference tournament is the ability to win rematches.
“The second matchup,†Gates said last week, “is all preparation. Teams get a feel for each other.â€
And in rematches, teams have apparently gotten a better feel for Missouri than it has of them.
That’s the hold-up in weighing an otherwise favorable bracket layout for the Tigers out in Nashville. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ went 6-2 against the other seven teams in their half of the bracket, having beaten all but one of them at some point in the regular season.
Mizzou already has beaten its second-round opponent, whichever that winds up being. Should Missouri win there, it’ll face No. 2 seed Florida, whom it upset by one point on the road in January.
The Tigers’ potential semifinal opponents are, in order of likelihood that they make it that far: 14 seed Oklahoma, which Mizzou dominated in Columbia but struggled against last week; 11 seed Georgia, which Mizzou beat by 13 points on the road; Kentucky, which handed the Tigers their Saturday loss; and Alabama, which MU downed by 12 in a home-game shootout.
Given that Auburn, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Arkansas, Texas and Vanderbilt — against which Missouri went a collective 2-6 — are all on the opposite half of the bracket, that’s favorable company for MU to potentially make a run.
There’s the question of probability, of course, when it comes to the Tigers putting something together in Nashville. There’s also a question of how much effort there is worthwhile.
A chance to play for a conference championship is, naturally, worth plenty. But getting there from Missouri’s position would mean playing four games in four days — all with the physical gusto of SEC action. An SEC semifinal appearance means three games in three days. These achievements are not without a physical toll.
Gates was firm Saturday in saying that no fatigue has crept into his team, in part because he has been able to keep their minutes in check. That ought to lend itself to a degree of freshness in both postseason tournaments.
But could over-exertion in the SEC tournament limit Mizzou’s potential in the bigger dance that follows a week later? Maybe it’s an irrelevant or irreverent question.
What is definitely worth asking is what the SEC tournament can be and needs to be for the Tigers. Is it a chance for a team that has lost four of its last five games to sort itself out with another win or two? Is it an opportunity for a team that went 3-8 outside of its home arena in the regular season to prove it can perform well in the neutral-site environments that host this time of year’s games? Or will it merely serve as a countdown for how much time is left for this Missouri group?
“We know what we can do,†forward Mark Mitchell said. “We know the type of team we have, and we’re going to keep working.â€
