Kansas puts Mizzou in the hunt

By beating Oklahoma on Monday night, Kansas officially made the race for the Big 12 title a three team fight.

If Missouri can take care of its business against Kansas State on Wednesday, Sunday’s showdown in Lawrence will be an opportunity for Missouri to pull into a three-way tie for first by handing the Jayhawks their second conference loss. Missouri and Oklahoma have both already fallen twice in Big 12 competition.

Four days ago, Oklahoma had a death grip on the conference. Two losses and one injury to Blake Griffin later, and it truly is anyone’s conference to win.

Tigers get 10th win

In the nonconference schedule, when a bad team like SIUE would come to Missouri, coach Mike Anderson would often say that the opponent “had nothing to lose and everything to gain.” If they lost at Mizzou Arena, that’s what was supposed to happen. But if they won, it would make their season.

Missouri’s trip to Colorado on Saturday was basically the exact opposite.

The Tigers had nothing to gain and everything to lose. By beating Colorado, the Tigers didn’t bolster their tournament resume. They didn’t impress any coaches or poll voters. It isn’t a win that is likely to give the team much extra confidence going into its final four games.

Really, the only thing the Tigers did on Saturday was avoid all of the negative things that could have happened if they lost.

If Missouri had lost to Colorado, it likely would have fallen drastically in the polls. It would have put the Tigers decidedly out of the race for the Big 12 title. Losing to Colorado would have left the Tigers with more work to do to officially seal up their tournament resume.

But Missouri didn’t lose, it won. And with 10 conference wins already, Missouri can coast into the big dance.

Kansas hangover this weekend?

When I was on 590 AM in St. Louis on Wednesday night, the host asked me if I thought Missouri would have a letdown this weekend against Nebraska. On one hand, it makes sense. The win over Kansas was really emotional. Players are feeling good about themselves. National media is blabbing about Missouri. Conventional wisdom might say all the hype will go to the Tigers’ heads, or at least serve as a distraction this weekend.

But I don’t think Missouri will choke against Nebraska. Here’s why:

1. The Tigers have motivation. The loss at Nebraska really stung. Walking out of the locker room, players looked like they were taking the loss hard. Revenge against the Cornhuskers on Missouri’s home floor should be enough motivation to keep the Tigers’ focus on the floor and off Lil Wayne.

2. This team has great leadership. DeMarre Carroll, Matt Lawrence and Zaire Taylor won’t let the young players get caught up in the swirling hype. Those guys play with great focus and determination. They will demand the same from their teammates. If there is one player who might get distracted, it’s Leo Lyons. But he is completely unpredictable anyway.

3. The old midnight rule. Mike Anderson’s team rule – that players must forget about games, win or lose, at midnight – has helped the Tigers get past some tough losses this year. Now, it will help them move on after the Kansas win and refocus on the task at hand. Monday night’s win gave the Tigers a really, really, really outside chance at the conference title. Losing this game would completely take Missouri out of the race.

If players are actually serious about playing for a conference title, then they won’t mess around with the Cornhuskers.

Missouri has its signature win.

Obviously, most everyone knows that Missouri upset Texas on Wednesday night. Everyone probably also knows that Zaire Taylor was the hero at the end. Here are my thoughts about the game, to compliment Luke’s game story, which you can find on the Missourian site.

First the positives from the game:

1. This game is huge for Missouri. It gives them a win against one of the conference’s elite. It also proves they can win on the road in a tough environment against a good team. On top of that, this win sets the Tigers up for 10 conference wins if they beat the teams they should the rest of the way.

2. When he wants to be, Zaire Taylor is a dynamic offensive player. Wednesday, he made Texas pay for leaving him open on the perimeter and obviously showed toughness going to the rim at the end. Most of the time he prefers to defer to his teammates. We’ve seen his offensive ability before this season though, especially at Georgia and against Iowa State.

3. Missouri’s press can really mess with other teams. Sometimes it takes a while, but sooner or later opponents lose focus and make mistakes. The other beauty of the press is that it takes teams out of what they like to do. On Wednesday, once Texas broke the press, the Longhorns constantly had decisions to make. Should they immediately attack the rim or pull it back out to run the offense? The press constantly makes the other team think. At the end of the game, Texas clearly had a headache.

4. In the final few minutes of the first half, Keith Ramsey and Laurence Bowers came up huge. Pittman dominated Lyons and Carroll, but Ramsey and Bowers made an impact on defense and on the boards to keep Missouri within striking distance at halftime. Their efforts were huge, whether it shows up in the box score or not.

5. Lyons is really playing great ball right now. Baylor was not a fluke.

6. Great defense in the second half, whether it came fullcourt, halfcourt or in the zone.

Now some negatives. I know it’s a huge win, but I still saw some issues.

1. We already knew about this, but Missouri can be soft inside on defense. We saw it against Kansas State when Samuels scored 18. We saw it against Texas when Pittman scored a career-high 25. Big, strong interior players can simply outmuscle Lyons, Carroll and Bowers.

2. DeMarre Carroll has trouble finishing around the hoop against those same big players. As important as he is to the Tigers, this is a pretty glaring weakness. Late in games, Anderson needs to stick with Lyons and possibly Taylor after today. Carroll is too likely to have his shot blocked or to miss a layup to be a reliable clutch option.

Lyons Blogging

Leo Lyons is officially a blogger. Check him out on leolyonsplanet.blogspot.com. With some pretty nice formatting, it’s clear he has spent some time working on setting it up over the past few days.

Q&A with Michael Bittner

I answered some questions for Michael Bittner, a convergene student at MU who works with a CBS website in St. Louis. Here are his questions and my answers:

A win is a win, but can Wednesday night’s victory over Oklahoma State – a game the Tigers led by 20 points with 10 minutes remaining in the 2nd half but managed to win by just 2 – be considered a success?

As difficult as it is to win on the road in the Big 12, the Oklahoma State game should definitely be considered a success for the Tigers. Counting Missouri’s win Wednesday night, road teams have only won six games in the Big 12. We saw how tough the road can be in the Tigers’ loss at Nebraska. The Cornhuskers were a vastly inferior team to Missouri, but there is just something about playing on the road in the Big 12 that causes strange things to happen.

I think Wednesday’s win over the Cowboys will give Missouri, especially its freshmen, a lot more confidence on the road. It will also be a learning experience about poise under pressure. I doubt we’ll see Marcus Denmon committing any more intentional fouls in crunch time.

Probably the biggest question mark early in the season about this team was if they could win on the road. So even blowing the lead, I think any road win is a success.

Much has been made about the Tigers offense, coined by Coach Mike Anderson as “40 minutes of hell.”  Anderson finally has athletes who play his style, but is it so up-tempo they will be worn out come March?

I think the 40 minutes of hell title is usually given to the defense rather than the offense, but the Tigers do want to play fast at both ends of the floor. One of the team’s weaknesses is that their offense is so dependant on the defense. If the press is forcing turnovers, the Tigers can fastbreak and get easy buckets. When the defense isn’t forcing turnovers or missed shots, the Tigers can struggle to score in the halfcourt.

To answer the question, I think there is a real possibility that some of the Tigers will be worn down. I have never seen any other basketball players compete with the constant intensity that DeMarre Carroll and J.T. Tiller bring to the court. Carroll was hurt last season and his ankle has given him some problems early this year.

Still, I don’t think fatigue will be a huge factor for this team for two reasons. For one, the Tigers did a good job of scheduling a relatively tough nonconference schedule while still playing their fair share of cupcakes. The starters had plenty of rest early in the season in the second half of games against teams like SIUE and Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Secondly, the Tigers depth will help them avoid fatigue. Anderson legitimately has an 11-man rotation, and no one on the team averages more than 25 minutes. That means the team should be fresh come the end of the season.

It has been noted Missouri does not have a signature go-to guy.  Who do you think Anderson would want to take the last shot in a tie game?

I think this is possibly the team’s biggest weakness. The Tigers simply lack a player who they can get the ball to when they really need a basket at the end of a game.

Carroll is a steady player, but he’s too likely to have his shots blocked to be a reliable clutch performer. J.T. Tiller and Zaire Taylor are steady players, but they aren’t able to create their own shots. Tiller’s jumper is subject at times. Marcus Denmon took the shot down three with four seconds to go at Nebraska, and he didn’t come through.

I think if the team needs a three, Matt Lawrence should be the one to get the shot. He is having a much better season than last year. If the team needs a two, I think the best bet is Leo Lyons, but now that he is coming off the bench after his suspension, it’s hard to say how much confidence Anderson has in him. Still, he’s the team’s most talented player.

Which freshman do you think has been most impressive this far into the season?

I have been most impressed with Kim English. He is a steady defender and a solid shooter. He is also a mature person and an extremely hard worker. Best of all, English is a winner and a team player.

The other freshman who is quietly having a nice start to his career is Laurence Bowers. He is a human highlight reel. There just aren’t enough minutes for him.

Gut feeling: Will Mizzou be dancing in the NCAA tournament this March?

I think Missouri will be in the tournament, but it better take care of its business early. If the Tigers need to help their resume in the final three games against Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M, they could be in trouble.

I just don’t see that many good teams in the Big 12. I predict Missouri will finish fifth in the conference and come in around a seven or eight seed.

Miguel Paul’s family circus

Well it seems like the Miguel Paul story has mostly blown over with the 46-hour news cycle, but we still don’t have all the answers.

Based on all of the reports and information that have come out, there is a lot of things that we are pretty sure about. But there isn’t too much we know with 100 percent certainty.

The one thing we are sure of is that Miguel Paul and Chris Paul are not first cousins. Most of the information seems to point to them being distant relations. Supposedly Miguel Paul’s father is “distantly” related to Chris Paul’s uncle James Paul. At least, that’s what MU basketball spokesperson Dave Reiter says.

We are also pretty sure that Miguel Paul and Chris Paul have not met like Miguel told me they had for a story I did in November. Chris claims they never met. The Hornets played a couple of games around the country during the tournament where Miguel had said they met. I’m not 100 percent sure they didn’t meet, but I’m pretty close.

If you missed all of this somehow. I’ll help you catch up. Here is my original Missourian story. Here is a story I wrote summarizing all of the recent reports.

Lyons in uniform, not starting

They announced that Lyons was starting. Then right before the tip off they “corrected” it. Seems like a ploy by Anderson to keep Iowa State on its toes.

The starters are the same as against Colorado. English and Ramsey starting.

UPDATE: In the postgame press conference Anderson said that the announcer just messed up, and that he didn’t actually make a change. It makes sense that Anderson wasn’t planning to start three bigs in Lyons, Carroll and Ramsey. Whoever was on the floor, Missouri played well, winning 77-46.

Missouri basketball at crossroads

After the loss to Nebraska, Missouri coach Mike Anderson tried his best to minimize the importance of one road loss in the Big 12. It isn’t easy to win on the road, and this was only one game.

Obviously, it isn’t in Anderson’s best interest to exaggerate the significance of the loss. There are still 15 conference games left, and the coach needs to keep his players confident and motivated.

But the Nebraska loss has more significant implications that the coach might want to acknowledge publicly.

After the 13-2 nonconference record, Missouri’s goal is clearly to qualify for the NCAA tournament. To do that, the Tigers need to beat teams like Nebraska that are on the bottom half of the conference. That’s not to say that this one loss dooms Missouri’s season. It doesn’t. But it is a game that the Tigers should have won. If the Tigers don’t end up in the tournament at the end of the season, this Nebraska loss might be the one that they really regret.

As many of you probably know, Leo Lyons has been suspended indefinitely because of a traffic arrest. He will miss the game against Colorado on Wednesday, and the situation will be evaluated again before Saturday’s game against Iowa State.

The Tigers’ schedule is pretty easy to start conference play, and Colorado is probably the worst team in the conference. Without Leo, however, nothing is going to be easy. If Missouri can’t win shorthanded on Wednesday, the team will really have to do something special to have any chance at the tournament after an 0-2 start to conference play against weak competition.

So even though it’s early, these next couple games will be paramount to Missouri’s chances of playing in the postseason.

Big 12 Weekly Awards

Here’s a shocker: Willie Warren is the Big 12 Rookie of the Week again. The super freshmen got the award for the fourth time this week. He scored 35 points in Oklahoma’s first loss of the season to Arkansas.

The Player of the Week was Sherron Collins, who scored a career-high 26 points in Kansas’ signature win against Tennessee this weekend. As the only significant returner to the KU squad this year, Collins has really stepped up, leading the team in scoring in 10 of 13 games.

Taylor shows up big in Georgia

Zaire Taylor has become known as the steady, pass-first point guard of this year’s Missouri Tigers. He has one of the best assist-to-turnover ratios around.

But against Georgia on Saturday, Taylor showed that there is more to his offensive game than just making the smart pass. He scored 17 points, 13 of which came in the second half, to go with three rebounds and 3 assists.

In the second half, Taylor showed off the versatility of his offensive game. He knocked down an open three, hit a floater in the middle of the lane off the dribble and even tipped back his own miss. It was a performance that will likely cause Big 12 opponents to think twice before they overlook Taylor as an offensive threat.

Maybe the best thing about Taylor’s scoring on Saturday was that it all came in the flow of the Tigers’ offense. He didn’t force the action, but when he had an open look, he didn’t hesitate either. He showed the confidence he’ll need to play clutch minutes in conference games.

Big 12 Men’s Update

The conference fell apart in the Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series, losing four of the last five games to end in a tie at six games each. The final blow came when Texas Tech lost 111-66 to Stanford last night.

Stanford is now 9-0 and won two games in the series. They also beat Colorado back on Nov. 29.

Really, some of the other Big 12 teams struggling is a good sign for Missouri. If some of the marginal teams in the Big 12, like Texas Tech and Kansas State, play poorly, it only increases Missouri’s chances of sneaking into the NCAA Tournament.

The Illinois loss was huge, but it didn’t ruin the season. Like with any major conference team, Missouri’s record in conference play will be the most important part of their postseason hopes.

Craig Brackins, a 6-foot-10 forward from Iowa State was the Big 12 player of the week this week. He averaged an impressive 28 points per game as Iowa State split a pair of games. Brackins scored a career-high 38 in a win at Houston.

Willie Warren was the Big 12 rookie of the week, big surprise. The freshmen scored a career-best 31 in Oklahoma’s only game this week, a win at Rice. Warren is averaging just under 15 points per game and is shooting 57 percent in his past five games. This kid can flat out play.

One thing that these two have in common is that they both won road games this week. Something that Mizzou has yet to accomplish this season. Although it’s worth noting that the Tigers still haven’t played a road game. Their first one is against Georgia on Jan. 3.

Season hits slow spot

Since Mizzou’s Dec. 7 dismantling of Cal, after which pretty much every writer covering the team praised the Tigers profusely, the schedule has hit a bit of a lull.

Missouri doesn’t schedule games during finals week, and as a result, the Tigers have played just one game in the past 12 days. Needless to say, the closer than expected win over Murray St. and the build up for today’s contest with Stetson haven’t really kept the press busy.

It has been interesting, however, to see how some of the different publications in the region have decided to fill the void.

For our part, the Missourian has profiled a pair of players, senior guard Matt Lawrence and junior forward Keith Ramsey.

Steve Walentik, the beat writer from the Tribune, chose to write a piece about the new three-point line and how it is affecting (or not affecting) players around the Big 12.

The Post-Dispatch is finally catching on that this Missouri team is making some noise so they sent Vahe Gregorian to write something up from Monday’s media day. It was a tough spot for Vahe, considering it was such a slow week for the team. He ended up writing this piece about the newcomers and Kim English’s gym habits, which were both angles we’ve already heard.

And me? Well I’m passing the time by blogging about what other people did to pass the time. Since the media didn’t have any access after Monday this week, there isn’t a lot of fresh content out there. I would recommend that hardcore fans revisit some of the links above to get back into hoops season and gear up for the Stetson game.

A couple of other notable notes:

1. Matt Lawrence was named one of the 30 finalists for the Senior CLASS Award. The award is based on the four C’s of classroom, character, community and competition. After all of the character issues with last year’s team, it’s pretty refreshing to have Matt named to this type of list.

2. Mizzou might be on the brink of its first national ranking in the AP poll in five years. That’s right, Missouri is currently 28th in the AP Poll in terms of votes. Missouri received 44 points in this past week’s poll. Beating Stetson isn’t likely to jump the Tigers too far in next week’s poll. But if Missouri beats Illinois this coming Tuesday, expect it to be ranked the following week.

Higgins and Staiger receive Big 12 honors

This week’s Big 12 Player and Rookie of the Week weren’t the usual suspects.

The Player of the Week was Cory Higgins, a sophomore guard from Colorado who scored 33 points in Colorado’s only game this past week, a 75-56 win over Colorado State. Higgins is Colorado’s leading scorer this year, averaging a shade over 18 points per game.

The Rookie of the Week was Lucca Staiger, a sophomore guard at Iowa State. Staiger is a three-point specialist who is shooting 62.5 percent from beyond the arc over his past three games. Staiger, who is from Germany, averaged 16.5 points in two games this week. His season scoring average is eight points per game.

Trap game for Mizzou?

Hey all, I wanted to post this last night but I ran into some Internet issues. My apologies.

Coaches often talk about “trap games.” Trap games are contests that a team should win easily, but a combination of random contextual factors makes it much more difficult than people would think. Tonight’s contest wth the Murray St. Racers could be a trap game for Missouri. Here are a few reasons that the Tigers shouldn’t be looking past Murray State:

1. For starters, the Racers are a pretty decent team. Now I don’t buy into the whole transitive property of good basketball teams. Yes, Murray St. beat Western Kentucky badly. And yes, Western Kentucky beat Louisville, a top ten team. So what does that say about Murray St.? If you ask me, nothing. Still, Murray St. is one of the favorites in the Ohio Valley Conference, and the Racers enter Saturday’s contest with a 5-2 record.

2. Missouri hasn’t played since last Sunday’s win over Cal. The Tigers might be a little rusty after a week off.

3. Speaking of that Cal game, beating the Golden Bears was an emotional win for the Tigers. DeMarre Carroll and Missouri had a lot of bad memories from their loss at California last season, and they were excited to get a little revenge. Plus, anytime you can beat a major conference team on your home floor, it is going to be an exciting game. After an emotional high like that, it can be pretty tough to get motivated for a game against a team that nobody has ever heard of.

4. As Luke metioned in his story that appeared in the Missourian on Friday, the Racers have a local connection in Isaac Miles, who is originally from K.C. and wanted to play at Mizzou. Anytime an opposing team has any extra motivation, you have to be careful.

I still think Missouri will win this game handily, but if they don’t take the Racers seriously, this game could be closer than expected.

Also, on an unrelated note, I went out to eat last night at Outback and the entire Murray St. team was there eating at a table near ours. I’m not sure if any of them ate enough for it to affect their play.