In my opinion, this game was lost in the first half when Haith went DEEP into the bench due to foul trouble. I texted my brother-in-law at the time and proved to be prophetic as I said the only way Mizzou wins on the road is by getting out to a big lead in the first half and "just keeping it close" is going to end like all of the others. And sure enough...
Missouri was up 13-7 when Bowers picked up his second foul and was sent to the bench for the rest of the half. Missouri held their own until Oriakhi picked up his second foul, leading 19-14 at the point he went to the bench and the Tigers line-up was Pressey, Criswell, Rosburg, Webster-Chan and Ross. What was Haith thinking? One starter and four substandard bench players on the floor at the same time in a critical game?!? Shock of all shocks, Tennessee then went on a 12-2 run and went from being 5 down to 5 points ahead in a matter of 5 minutes. I had a pretty good idea how the game was going to end at that point. Instead of keeping Bowers in the game who was torching the Vols defense to extend an early lead, Mizzou was fortunate to be tied at halftime.
But like I said earlier, this team plays better when ahead and when on the road, conservative play-it-by-the-book let's-keep-it-close has not worked ONE SINGLE TIME this year. So why did Haith think it would be different this game? Well...it wasn't.
Phil Pressey
Phil played a solid game but will again be remembered for taking a questionable shot which missed horribly at a crucial point in the game. No way was he to blame for the loss. I know it's popular with the majority of the fanbase to place this one on him, but I simply cannot agree with that sentiment. 6/10.
Laurence Bowers
Bowers was making great cuts to the basket early on and Pressey was finding him. Unfortunately, foul trouble put him on the bench for all but six minutes of the first half after he had scored 9 of Missouri's first 13 points. Bowers was outmuscled much of the second half in fighting for rebounds as 5 Tennessee players had as many or more boards as Bowers ended up with. 7/10.
Jabari Brown
Never got it going and didn't look good on any of his 3-point attempts. 2/10.
Oriakhi was dominated by a much-younger Jarnell Stokes. Orakhi just couldn't keep him off the boards which proved to be a critical key to this game. 4/10.
Keion Bell
Bell was largely a no-show with 7 points and only 1 rebound. 3/10.
Earnest Ross
Ross was awful. He was 1-9 before hitting the 3-pointer at the buzzer, pushing his shooting percentage up to a whopping 20%. He missed easy lay-ups, he missed open threes, but worst of all his putrid defense allowed for Jordan McRae to heat up in the second half. 1/10.
Tony Criswell
Criswell scored 4 points, all in the last minute of the first half allowing Missouri to go into the locker room tied. Outside of that one minute of game time, Criswell was 0-3, 0 rebounds, 0 assists and 2 turnovers in his other 13 minutes of playing time. Not good. 2/10.
Now What?
Here is your 2012-2013 Missouri Tiger Basketball team. I think most of us are overall disappointed with how things have turned out. This team is not as good as we had hoped, even missing the services of Michael Dixon. I don't have any expectations that things will get any better for the conference and national tournaments for the following reasons:
1) Depth - early on this team looked to be deep, but it turns out that there is no depth and what depth there is pretty poor. I think the starting five is a good team, but after those first five, the bench leaves a lot to be desired. Ross and Criswell are horrible defenders and are almost always in the game whenever the opponent goes on a run. Rosburg and NWC bring absolutely nothing.
2) Effort - this team has been outhustled in a lot of games this year and has frequently looked horrible on defense. But we've seen moments when these guys can play good defense, so we know they have the ability they just don't seem committed to sustaining any effort on that end of the floor.
3) Fundamentals/Intangibles - the team looks to have poor fundamentals on defense and settles too often for poor shots without even trying to get it inside. If the game is close, is there any reason to think Mizzou is going to pull out a win?
4) Coaching - Haith needs to take some risks, in my opinion. We've seen the result of "keeping things close" and it never ends well for this bunch. Shorten that bench...never play Ross and Criswell at the same time. Ride Bowers as long as you can. For all of his faults, Norm did a great job of managing foul trouble I thought. He would allow his players (especially his stars) to play in the first half until they picked up 3 fouls and then spend time at half time addressing the foul issue so that no cheap ones were picked up early on in the second half. Bowers needs to be on the floor as much as possible.
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