Historic and Humiliating
Perhaps they should play the “Jaws” theme song at Mizzou Arena. Because just when you start to think it’s safe to have some hope...
Missouri followed up its first win over a Power Five team and probably its best effort of the season with the polar opposite of that in a 94-61 loss to Arkansas Tuesday night.
“I would say I’m embarrassed,” head coach Kim Anderson said. “The performance is unacceptable and obviously it starts with me.”
The Tigers fell behind 6-0 less than two minutes in. They cut it to 8-4 at the 16:19 mark of the first half. They would never be as close again. Arkansas made 14 of its first 17 shots, while Missouri took nearly seven minutes to make one from anywhere other than the free throw line. It wasn’t the Razorbacks’ patented pressure that bothered the Tigers. It was Missouri’s inability to apply anything resembling pressure on the other end. Arkansas shot 63% for the game.
“They made shots,” freshman Terrence Phillips said. “And they continued to make shots. They got off to a fast start...We cut it to nine and I don’t really know what happened from there.”
There was a point in the second half where it appeared the Tigers would make a game of it. Terrence Phillips scored four quick points and a Ryan Rosburg lay-in made it a 51-44 game. Arkansas scored 27 of the next 31 points.
“Whether it’s a one-point win or 30 don’t matter,” Arkansas coach Mike Anderson said. “Just get the win.”
Arkansas did so. Emphatically. A good portion of the 6,627 in attendance left their seats at the under eight timeout, never to return. At least not tonight. They missed nothing, except a few arena records set by the Razorbacks.
The 33-point loss was the biggest the Tigers have ever suffered at Mizzou Arena, which opened in 2004. The 94 points were the most an opponent has scored in the building, topping the 92 put up by Kansas on February 10, 2007. The last time the Tigers lost a home game by as many points, Wilt Chamberlain was on the other team. The last time they lost by more, the opposition was something called the Iowa Pre-Flight Seahawks. In a season that was sold as one that needed to show progress, the opposite happened on Tuesday night. Again.
Missouri now sits 8-8 on the season. The Tigers have faced nine high major teams. They have lost to eight of them, trailing each by at least 15 points. The 76-61 win over Auburn on Saturday (a result that plants the Alabama-based Tigers firmly in the SEC cellar) was clearly the exception to the rule that Missouri has a long way to go on the road back to basketball relevance.
Anderson gave Arkansas its due in the postgame press conference, heaping platitudes on the team coached by the last man to lead Mizzou to any sustained hoops success. He spoke of his own team’s youth and need to learn from the result. Again. For the first time, though, he found no silver linings. His opening comment was about embarrassment.
“It’s not the margin, it’s the way we played,” Anderson said when asked the source of that humiliation. “Well, the margin’s part of it.
“I don’t think we quit. We got run over by a truck.”
Horrific incidents haven’t been uncommon for the Tigers this year. Now 16 games--officially halfway--into the season, Missouri fans know little more about the direction or the future of their program than they did at the start. Mizzou travels to undefeated South Carolina on Saturday. They’ll then host Georgia, which blew Missouri out in Athens in the SEC opener. That’s followed by road trips to Texas A&M and Kentucky, quite likely the two best teams in the conference. So, yes, if you’re searching for wins in the near future, it is difficult not to come up empty.
“We can feel sorry for ourselves for a while,” Anderson said. “But it doesn’t do any good.”
And so, the season trudges on. To where, exactly, nobody knows.