More than Braggin' Rights at stake

Prior to games against North Carolina State and Illinois, Kim Anderson said this week was a chance for his team to show it had improved. Part one ended in a 73-59 loss to the Wolfpack on Saturday night.

“We’re not doing very well,” Anderson said dryly when reminded of his comments a few days earlier.

So how much more importance does the second game of the week now carry?

“That’s an important game I think from the standpoint it’s the next game,” Anderson said. “Yeah, it’s an important game. It’s not, you know, the absolute most important game of the season.

I get why he said it. He kind of has to say it. But I don’t agree. Wednesday night is, I think, the most important game Anderson has coached thus far at Missouri.

He has coached, for the record, 42 of them. He has won 14 and lost 28. Coming into this season, everyone talked about needing to see “improvement.” Wins and losses may not be the only measure of that, but it’s one of them--and not an unimportant one. So let’s compare this to last year.

Through ten games a year ago, Missouri was 5-5. The best win was against Valparaiso. In four games against high-profile competition (Arizona, Purdue, Oklahoma and Xavier), the Tigers were 0-and-4 with an average margin of defeat of 18.75 points. This season, Missouri is 5-5 through ten games. The best win is against Wofford. Against high-profile competition (Xavier, Kansas State, Northwestern, Arizona and NC State), the Tigers are 0-5 and have lost by an average of 18.25 points. Only one of those games was decided by less than 12 points.

At times, it has seemed like there has been improvement. The four freshmen have shown flashes of playing well. Missouri has jumped out to big leads in quite a few games (including, incidentally, a 19-9 edge over the Wolfpack on Saturday that disappeared as Missouri was outscored 53-23 over the next 22:28). But the bottom line looks eerily familiar.

“I said earlier this year we were all happier and everything and I said we haven’t had any adversity yet. Now we’ve had adversity,” Anderson said. “I don’t sense this being like it was. I haven’t had many discipline problems or anything like that. But now are guys frustrated and disappointed? Sure.”

The team seems to be more cohesive. There are fewer problems off the floor. There is, internally, still apparent optimism. But at some point, all of those things have to turn into results on the floor. And the players know it.

“It’s very important. We really need this Illinois win to get a head of steam going into conference play because conference play is really tough,” Tramaine Isabell said. “We need a win to get our confidence up and get us headed on the right track.”

“It’s huge,” Namon Wright said. “Just like every other game. We wanted to prove ourselves tonight, but things didn’t go well. Shots didn’t fall. You know, hard work’s gonna pay off.”

To pretend the pressure is not mounting on Anderson is ignoring a sizable elephant in the room. Last season was Missouri’s worst in a half century. This one is tracking in a similar direction. How much the state of this program is Kim Anderson’s fault can be (and has been) debated for endless hours and gigabytes. But whether it’s his fault or not, it is absolutely his problem.

“If you write ten bad articles, somebody’s gonna, you know, move you into another department or something,” Anderson said. “They’ll give you a chance to write and if you do real well again, they’ll move you back in. But you’ve got to produce. And if you don’t produce, you don’t have to go away, you’ve just got to keep working at it and other guys get an opportunity.”

Wednesday night is Missouri’s last chance to win a non-conference game over a program of consequence. For the record, Missouri might have already beaten teams that are actually better than Illinois, but none that have similar name recognition. Missouri should not be mistaken as one of college basketball’s powerhouse programs. But it is a program that should be measured in how it does against at least the Vanderbilts and NC States of the world, not by its performances against Northern Illinois and Arkansas State.

Should the Tigers lose that game, they will enter conference play no better than 7-and-6 and with no win over a team ranked higher than No. 173 by Ken Pomeroy (that’s Nebraska-Omaha by the way. The next two opponents, Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Savannah State, are 335 and 338, respectively). At that point, you begin searching for wins. It would take five (two more than last year) in SEC play to get to a dozen for the season. That would still tie Missouri's fewest in a season, outside of last year, since 1967-68; that was Norm Stewart's first year as head coach.

Is that enough? Can it be done? The pressure is mounting and the opportunities to relieve it are slipping by one by one. Missouri needs to grab a few. Quickly.