Pourover: The roller coaster season continues

SB Nation

Yesterday Missouri beat Mississippi State to move to 15-7 overall, and 5-4 in the SEC. 5-4 is good for 9th in the league. The Tigers are currently 61st in KenPom.com, which is the 12th best mark in the league. None

of these are standout rankings, but Mizzou at least has two of the better wins in the league having beating Florida and Kentucky.

The season has been a bit of a rollercoaster, and yesterday was no different.

The Tigers started off the game making 5 of their first 6 threes, only to follow that up with 4 makes in their last 20. They raced out to a 10 point lead, got into a verbal altercation after a play which led to Shawn Phillips lightly shoving a Mississippi State player and receiving a dead ball technical foul. That moment spurned a 12-2 run by the Bulldogs and suddenly the game was tied.

The Tigers steadied enough to regain the lead by 7 points by halftime. They then expanded their lead out all the way to as many as 16 points, and the lead was 15 after a thunderous putback dunk by Annor Boateng. But the troubled sophomore was streaking towards the rim on the next possession, preparing for a monumental dunk to send the Mizzou Arena crowd into a frenzy when his left leg gave out on his plant. A crowd prepared to explode was silenced as Coach Dennis Gates, and the training staff rushed to Annor’s side on the baseline. He was carted off, but not before he was able to give fans and teammates a symbol of his thankfulness of their support.

The score was 66-51 when Annor went down. In a normal season, Boateng throws down the second dunk on the break, the crowd goes wild, and Missouri coasts to a double digit win over a struggling State squad.

But a regular season is not this season.

Mizzou won the game, of course. But instead of going up 17 points with a rambunctious crowd jumping in their seats, their fans squirmed in their seats as Josh Hubbard was going to the line for a one and one, down just three points with the score now 74-71.

Fortunately he missed the free throw, Mark Mitchell grabbed the rebound and was immediately fouled where he went to the free throw line and made both shots. Another defensive stop, and a few more free throws and we began to breathe again.

But true to form, because everything is weird this season, the spread was 6.5, and Mizzou was up by 8 when Hubbard was streaking towards the rim with barely any time left. He planned to just lay it up but was met by Nick Randall who caused him to double clutch the ball, in the air, and he came down the ball. It’s, every day of the year, a traveling violation. But in this day and age the officials didn’t do anything about it so Hubbard landed and passed for a corner three, which went in. Taking the 8 point lead to 5, busting a lot of bettors, but just putting an exclamation point on the weirdness of the game.

And the weirdness of the season.

Maybe Missouri isn’t exactly who they wanted to be, or we wanted them to be. But it’s definitely been interesting.

Not always good interesting, but certainly interesting.

The SEC has created enough of an opening that Texas A&M is currently in 1st place. Kentucky was blasted into thin air by Vanderbilt in Memorial Gymnasium before going to Bud Walton Arena and taking out the Razorbacks. In any normal season the composition of the Missouri roster would be enough to get them amongst the league leaders.

But things have gone astray enough that they have to recover to beat second lowest rated KenPom.com team at home. They play really well at times, they look clueless during others. Their former top ranked recruit flashed the exact reason he was so highly touted only to show the exact reason he’s yet to get close to his potential on back to back possessions. Meanwhile their best defender and team captain point guard can’t seem to find what made him so dangerous as little as a month ago.

They’re almost there, but if you’re like me you don’t really think they’ll ever get “there”. They don’t need to get there to be a tournament team. They just need to get a smidge better, or maybe a teensy bit more consistent. Either way they have a week off to get as healthy as possible and then they head to Columbia, South Carolina for a very winnable road game. The Gamecocks are stingy again this year. But they’re also 11-11 and just 2-7 in league play. Get that game and now we’re talking.