Phil Pressey
Pressey was great on offense and not-so-great on defense. He had a number of amazing passes and obviously took Haith's comments to heart as he only shot twice the whole game. While I loved his highlight-reel passes, Phil needs to recognize that the same things he can do going against Auburn's 152nd ranked defense will not be possible when going against Florida's top ranked defense. Missouri still has upcoming games against decent defensive teams in Florida, Kentucky and Ole Miss and I hope that Phil adjusts his game accordingly. 7/10.
Laurence Bowers
Bowers was pretty quiet and never really asserted himself. He made his baskets in short little bursts and never did much outside of that. 5/10.
Jabari Brown
Brown had what I thought was his worst game at home this year. However, he's still probably the second or third most important player on this team and does enough good things to help the team. He's especially helpful though when he's able to knock down the outside shots. I was glad that he got back on track from the line as he knocked down all 7 of his free throws. 5/10.
Alex Oriakhi
Oriakhi missed another wide open lay-up early on and was also somewhat quiet in this game finishing with 11 points and 6 rebounds. I figured that he would be a little more dominating at home against an overmatched opponent. 5/10.
Earnest Ross
Ross had his best offensive game for Mizzou and was shooting with a lot of confidence. Can he be consistent enough to continue with this type of performance on the road? I'm still not crazy about his defense, but I guess there's no point in expecting that to get any better as that's the one area of his game that his been consistent. 9/10.
Keion Bell
Bell did what this team needs for him to do...get steals...score in transition and make drives to the basket. I also liked that he had a couple of nice assists on his drives. More of this please. 10/10.
Tony Criswell
Criswell had 4 points and 3 rebounds in 14 minutes of play. While I am a big fan of Tony and love his hustle on the offensive boards, he's not a good defender and gets beat badly on a few occasions every game. He seems to have very poor lateral quickness and also bites on too many fakes and crossovers. He was jumping out on a number of pump fakes against Auburn, which completely took him out of the play on defense which led to some easy points for the other Tigers. 5/10.
Overall Thoughts
When making these reports, I am mindful of the individual game and the meta-game (the season). I am happy that Mizzou was able to defend their home floor and get the victory over Auburn, but as I said above, this game showed many of the same fundamental problems which are going to keep this team from doing much in the post-season. Bell's defensive pressure was nice, but most teams have a number of defenders who can create those types of turnovers from the opposition. It really is alarming at how poorly Mizzou does in this area (I know I sound like a broken record as I harp on this after almost every game but once again Auburn had 12 turnovers when they have been averaging over 20 on the season). Missouri is now ranked 299th in the nation at creating turnovers. As a result, team's routinely have their best offensive showings against Missouri. With such a shoddy defense, all it takes is a less-than-stellar shooting performance and this team can lose to anybody. I had high hopes that the defense would keep us in games despite a huge drop-off in offensive efficiency, but the truth of the matter is that this defense is even worse than last year's. Again, glad to get the win, but have resigned myself for this to end up being a pretty lackluster season.
Next up: Texas A&M on Thursday.
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