Mizzou women’s basketball has started to hit its stride under the first year of Kellie Harper with an upset win on the road against Mississippi State. The Tigers have now won back-to-back conference games,
improving to 3-6 and 11th in the SEC.
The team has the perfect chance to continue building on this momentum, traveling to face an Arkansas team who is winless in conference play before hosting an improved Georgia team that sits in the middle of the pack. Here’s what there is to know about the games ahead and who can make the difference for Mizzou.
Hog Hunting
Mizzou has a great opportunity to keep the winning streak going when they travel to Fayetteville on Thursday to face Arkansas. The Tigers have won the last two matchups in the series, including a 94-69 win in Columbia three weeks prior. The first match was defined by Mizzou’s fast start, starting the game on a 16-2 run. The Tigers led 20-4 at the end of the first quarter, helping the team lead wire-to-wire. The team never trailed and the contest was only tied once for the first 11 seconds.
The Razorbacks have struggled all season and are the last winless team in the SEC, sitting at 0-8. Since the first meeting Arkansas has lost three games by an average margin of 17.3 points. WarrenNolan.com projects that they will finish winless in conference play, with this matchup on Thursday being their best chance to pick up a win.
Arkansas does have some advantages over Mizzou, specifically when it comes to their added height. The Razorbacks held a 17-8 advantage in offensive rebounds which they translated into winning more second chance points at 16-11.
Taleyah Jones has been the team’s leading scorer all season, and led the way with 22 points during the meeting in Columbia. But one player who can make the difference for Arkansas is junior center Ashlynn Chlarson, who has averaged 5.3 points and 5.6 rebounds this season. Chlarson was the second leading scorer in the first meeting with 14 points on 5-8 shooting while grabbing six rebounds. These contributions came in only 15 minutes as the junior fouled out and had to leave the game early. If Mizzou can continue to attack Chlarson in the paint in the teams’ second meeting, that means it will limit her effectiveness on the other end.
Battling Bulldogs
The Tigers will return to Columbia on the afternoon of Super Bowl Sunday for a showdown against Georgia. The Bulldogs won the most recent matchup last year in Athens 74-72 after a last-second buzzer-beater. However, Mizzou won the last matchup in Columbia 69-57 back in 2024. Overall, Georgia leads the series 11-8 thanks to a four-game winning streak from 2021-2023.
Georgia has been the surprise team of the SEC, currently 18-4 overall and 4-4 in the SEC with a pair of top 25 wins. Perhaps the teams’ biggest win of the season came on the road against Kentucky 72-67. The key difference in that win came in bench points, with the Bulldogs holding the edge 21-6.
Junior Rylie Theuerkauf scored 19 of those 21 bench points, shooting 5-9 from the field and 4-7 from three. Theuerkauf is usually a starter for Georgia, averaging 10.4 points on shooting splits of 42/41/86. This is her first year in Athens, transferring in after two seasons with Wake Forest. As a sophomore Rylie averaged 12 points per game for the Demon Deacons. While she is not the leading scorer, her proficiency from the three-point line makes her an extremely potent weapon for the Bulldogs.
Player to Watch: Abbey Schreacke
While Grace Slaughter and Shannon Dowell collected all the highlights in the win against Mississippi State, Abbey Schreacke played a key role in the win as a tertiary scorer. She finished the game with 13 points, shooting 5-8 from the field, 3-6 from three while collecting three rebounds and dishing out three assists. Schreacke made all three of her triples in the second half, with two of them coming at the beginning of the third quarter when the rest of the Mizzou offense struggled out of the gate.
Schreacke has been highly consistent in her three seasons at Mizzou thus far, averaging between 7.5-7.8 points per game every year. This season she is averaging a career-high in points, jumping from 7.6 last year to 7.8. Schreacke has also averaged career-highs in rebounds, steals, blocks, three-point and free-throw percentage. She is in the middle of a hot streak, averaging 11.5 points, 5 rebounds, and 2.5 steals while shooting 56% from the field and 50% from three across the last two games.
While Schreacke will rarely lead the team, her scoring can be the difference between wins and losses against conference opponents. This season the Tigers are 7-3 when the junior scores in double-digits.
Schreacke and the rest of Mizzou looks to keep the hot streak alive when they travel to face Arkansas at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday in Fayetteville. The game will be on SEC Network+ and is available to watch through the ESPN app.
