Column: Bright spots from the season opener

I’m not going to write columns about every basketball game, just the ones I feel inspired to write something about. So don’t expect one Saturday or Sunday morning about the Tigers beating Howard.

I took a night to think about and evaluate my feelings from Monday’s season-opening loss to Memphis and here’s where I ended up.

The second half felt eerily similar. New team, tons of new faces, and yet the same issues.

Missouri’s offense fell apart as coach Dennis Gates made some, we’ll call them interesting, rotational choices. Rebounding was still an issue and the Tigers got dominated late leading to a double-digit loss.

That was just about every game from December on last season and Monday became the program’s 20th-consecutive loss, keeping Missouri winless in the calendar year of 2024.

That streak will end Friday and the Tigers will be over .500 by Monday night, but that doesn’t solve much right now.

Though I still think there were a lot of positives to take away from the game.

Part of what happened game after game last year was a slow start on offense, then a charge back in about a 10-minute spurt late in the first half or early in the second half.

That didn’t happen. Missouri didn’t look great for the first minute, but the Tigers were flying around for most of the first half. Playing in transition, moving the ball, turning steals into points in a way that felt a lot more like 2022-23 than last year.

I think most of the first half went about as well as you could hope for.

“We ended up executing some things in that first half that I thought should have taken place in that second,” Gates said. “… It’s just the way the game goes.”

Aidan Shaw was impacting the game in a way we’ve only seen a time or two in his first couple of years.

Who would have guessed Trent Pierce would be leading the team with 10 points at halftime after clearly taking more than one step forward offensively?

Anthony Robinson might just be the starting point guard moving forward after…

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Author : Mizzou Today

Publish date : 2024-11-06 12:00:00

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