ST. LOUIS — The NCAA Tournament has a knack for creating unfamiliarity.
Many participating teams play far from home. Some matchups feature opposing styles of play unseen in the regular season. The NCAA Tournament selection committee is kind to some regarding locations and matchups, but certainly not all.
There might not be a team that received a kinder set of circumstances than Mizzou, which will face No. 7 Miami (Fla.) as the West Region’s No. 10 seed on Friday at 9:10 p.m.
Some teams will rack up
a ton of airline miles from playing in March Madness. Villanova and St. John’s are playing their opening-round games in San Diego. UCLA and UCF will face off in Philadelphia, while Saint Louis will battle Georgia in Buffalo.
Mizzou, meanwhile, gets to play about two hours east of campus in St. Louis, which is also the university’s largest alumni base. Miami (Fla.) head coach Jai Lucas said on Thursday that he’s treating Friday’s contest as a road game. Interestingly, Dennis Gates seemed staunchly against calling Friday a home game.
“I don’t view anything as a home game because it is not at Mizzou Arena on Norm Stewart Court,” he said. “I can’t project the ticket sales. We look at it as the NCAA Tournament. And the NCAA Tournament is all about neutral sites.”
Regardless of how both coaches are preparing for the atmosphere in Enterprise Center, the Tigers playing so close to home is rare for a team of their caliber, as noted in my fan guide. Since 2000, only 19 teams seeded No. 9-16 have played their first NCAA Tournament game within two hours of campus.
Additionally, Mizzou will play Miami (Fla.) at the site of MU’s demoralizing 91-48 loss to Illinois in December. I asked Jacob Crews if that’s still in his head.
“It’s hard not to think about,” he said.
Annor Boateng called the loss, which was MU’s seventh-worst since World War II, “one of our lowest points”. Trent Pierce, however, looked at the loss in a different light.
“That was our turning point,” he said. Mizzou would go on to beat Florida and Kentucky in consecutive games, with multiple players referencing time away from the team as a positive reset for them, as almost two weeks separated the Illinois and Florida games.
Now, the get-back is within reach.
“I see it as a game for us to redeem ourselves here,” Pierce said.
As if that wasn’t enough, Mizzou will be facing a mirror image of itself in Miami (Fla.). Like the Tigers, the Hurricanes run much of their offense inside the arc through a jumbo forward in Malik Reneau. They don’t shoot many 3’s (320th in 3-point attempts per game) and get to the free-throw line at a decent rate (89th in free-throw attempts), but they struggle once they get there (310th in free-throw percentage). The Hurricanes also like to batter and bruise opponents around the basket on both ends of the floor.
“We see a lot of us in them,” Boateng said.
Plus, the Tigers will see some familiar faces on the opposing sideline. Charlton “C.Y.” Young, now an assistant coach at UM, spent three seasons as an assistant under Gates at Mizzou. Marcus Allen, a Miami native who played his freshman season at Mizzou, transferred to the Hurricanes after last season, although he’s been out since December as he battles Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.
Elsewhere, UM guard Tru Washington played with Trent Pierce at AZ Compass Prep in Phoenix, while Miami (Fla.) guard Tre Donaldson was teammates with Anthony Robinson II at Florida State University High School in Tallahassee, Fla. Young said it’ll be “weird” coaching against players he’s mentored for a long time.
Before the season, Sebastian Mack compared his style of play to fellow Chicago native Charlie Moore, a five-year college player who spent his final season with the Hurricanes as their starting point guard.
So, what does this all mean?
Mizzou hasn’t felt like a team of destiny at many points this season. Their destiny often seemed to be, at most, an early exit in the Big Dance. While a handful of spectacular wins ultimately got the Tigers into the 64-team field, they squandered numerous opportunities for even greater success, so much so that Shawn Phillips Jr., who’s from Dayton, Ohio, said he thought Mizzou might play there in the First Four.
And yet, some stars are still aligning for the Tigers. They not only avoided the play-in games, but they get to play close to home against their doppelganger in the same place where they hit rock bottom — this may be the universe’s way of asking Mizzou if it truly wants revenge. Creating more ideal circumstances for the Tigers would be extremely difficult.
Perhaps this is a team of destiny. The last time Mizzou entered the NCAA Tournament as a double-digit seed and faced Miami (Fla.) in the Round of 64 was in 2002, when the Tigers became the first No. 12 seed to make the Elite Eight. The last time Mizzou suffered a non-conference loss of at least 40 points and still made the NCAA Tournament was in 1994, when the Tigers captured a No. 1 seed and made the Elite Eight.
Fate has already brought the Tigers and ‘Canes together, even against Young’s desires.
“I wish we didn’t have to go to battle,” Young said. “I think the NCAA (Selection) Committee has a sense of humor … They like great storylines and all that stuff, so I had a feeling it was coming.”
With the madness set to take over St. Louis, fate has done all it can. Redemption is now fully in Mizzou’s control, and its season will largely be defined by whether the Tigers can achieve it or not.
