Name: University of Missouri
Location: Columbia, Missouri
Whereabouts is that in the state? Not quite precisely dead in the center of Missouri, but it’s close, and it’s about halfway along a drive between Saint Louis and Kansas City.
Did I catch that they also claim to be MU, much like our beloved Marquette University? Yes. It’s right there in the top left corner of Missouri.edu — looking into this is how I discovered that the University of Missouri self-identifies as Mizzou for actual collegiate branding
reasons, not just athletics — and their Primary Signature Logo has what they call a “stacked MU mark.
Shouldn’t they be UM? Sure, but Michigan beat them to that by about 20 years.
Okay, so did they beat Marquette to MU? I can’t say for certain when Missouri started using that particular logo, but…
Founded: 1839 as the first public university west of the Mississippi River, and thus beating Marquette to existing by 40 years or so. The founding is just when the state legislature passed the bill to create the university, they didn’t actually hold classes until 1841, but again, that’s still got Marquette’s 1881 beat.
Rats. Yeah, it’s a bummer.
Hey, I just realized, is this the first time that Marquette has played another MU/UM team for the first four games of a season? If you count Detroit Mercy because they can be called UDM, sure, we can count that as four straight. I honestly can not answer that question without reading the season by season results until my eyes bleed, but I feel pretty confident guessing that it is the first time that’s happened. Shouts to Northern Illinois for breaking up the streak on Wednesday.
Enrollment: 28,347 students for the 2026 Fall Semester, with 24,276 as undergraduate students.
Nickname: Tigers
Why “Tigers”? It dates back to when the school closed in 1862 due to the Civil War and the campus became a Union Army installation. The people of Columbia created a militia to repel Confederate forces that attempted to engage the base, and their tenacity was such that the militia became known as the Fighting Tigers of Columbia. Fast forward to the creating of the football team in 1890, and they proudly took the same nickname.
Notable Alumni: cartoonist Mort Walker, the creator of the Beetle Bailey comic strip; Andrew Cherng, founder of Panda Express; Stan Kroenke, owner of the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, the Los Angeles Rams, and the majority owner of Arsenal FC; actor Tom Berenger, perhaps best known for his role in Major League; Kenneth Lay, the CEO of Enron when they were doing securities fraud; musician Sheryl Crow; Sam Walton, founder of Walmart; television producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the creator of Designing Women; two-time NCAA wrestling champion Ben Askren; playwright Tennessee Williams; actor Jon Hamm; sportswriter Pat Forde; actor David Koechner, best known as Champ Kind in Anchorman; actor Robert Loggia; WNBA lightning rod Sophie Cunningham; PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer; two-time NCAA wrestling champion and Olympic silver medalist Sammie Henson; television producer Jonathan Murray, co-creator of MTV’s The Real World; William F. Baker, chief structural engineer of the Burj Khalifa; Academy Award winning actor George C. Scott; pro wrestler Matt Sydal; television producer SallyAnn Salsano, creator of MTV’s Jersey Shore; three-time NCAA wrestling champion and Olympic bronze medalist J’den Cox; sportswriter Wright Thompson; Mel Carnahan, Missouri governor in the 1990s and the only person to ever be elected to the United States Senate after dying; and finally, former Providence men’s basketball coach Kim English.
On that note, let’s re-arrange things a little bit…
All-Time Series: Missouri leads, 5-4.
Are any of those games notable? Why, I’m glad you asked! This game will be the first regular season meeting between the two teams since a January 1984 contest in Milwaukee that went 58-57 in Missouri’s favor. However, there have been two contests since then that anyone over the age of, let’s say, 35 should remember. The first meeting since 1984 was in the second round of the 2003 NCAA tournament when #3 seed Marquette dropped #6 seed Missouri, 101-92, in overtime on their way to the Final Four. The second meeting since 1984 was in the second round of the 2009 NCAA tournament when #3 seed Missouri beat #6 seed Marquette, 83-79, on their way to eventually bowing out to UConn in the Elite Eight.
However, that game is more notable than just being an NCAA tournament contest. With 5.5 seconds left and the score tied at 79, Missouri’s JT Tiller was fouled while driving to the basket, but landed on his hand and was too injured to shoot the free throws. That meant that Missouri head coach (and future St. John’s head coach) Mike Anderson was allowed to make a substitution and send that sub to the free throw line in place of Tiller. That sub? None other than Kim English, the future Providence head coach, who made both. We really did not give English enough crap for that during his time in Friartown.
Now, if you’re saying, “hey, wait a minute, the coach of the injured player doesn’t get to pick the replacement shooter, the other coach does to prevent shenanigans!” You are 100% correct about that… NOW. The NCAA changed the rule in question as a result of this game and this outcome. Now, sure, Tiller was actually a better free throw shooter than English that season, but the fact of the matter is that with 5.5 seconds left, if you’re too injured to shoot two free throws to win the game for your team, then you’re probably too injured to return to the game immediately after the free throws, which is what Tiller did. Had this happened in some random non-conference game in December, maybe nothing happens. But this happened to decide an NCAA tournament game in the final 10 seconds, and so that rule got changed in a HURRY.
Also Lazar Hayward stepped on the line while inbounding after the English FTs to actually cost MU the game. Sorry/not sorry, Lazar, it happened. Gotta say it.
Last Season: 20-13 with a 10-8 record in the SEC. That was enough to earn a #10 seed in the NCAA tournament, their third appearance in the past four seasons, but they lost 80-66 to Miami in the first round.
Final 2025-26 KenPom.com Ranking: #54 out of 365 teams, down from their preseason rank of #28
Final 2025-26 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #46, down from their preseason rank of #25.
Preseason Poll: Missouri was picked to finish 8th out of 16 teams in the SEC this season by a vote of the league’s coaches.
So Far This Year: Missouri clonked their two buy opponents on the head quite effectively, beating Cleveland State by 61 in the opener and then dropping SIUE by 38 back on Monday. In between the two, Mizzou traveled to Saint Louis for a game at the Enterprise Center, and lost 90-84 to Saint Louis University. The Tigers were heavily favored in that game, but the Billikens threw a 14-2 run at them in the first five minutes. After Missouri got within one at 24-23, SLU outscored them 25-15 to lead 49-38 at the break and then keep the Tigers at arm’s length the rest of the way. That’s what a top 40 team playing like a top 40 team can do to the Tigers. Just saying.
Current 2026-27 KenPom.com Ranking: #23 out of 365 teams, up from their preseason rank of #27.
Current 2026-27 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #26, up from their preseason rank of #28
Head Coach: Dennis Gates, in his fifth season with Missouri and eighth season as a Division 1 head coach. He has a record of 77-60 with the Tigers and 127-100 including his time at Cleveland State.
Bigs? 6’11” 245 pound Bryson Tiller starts for the Tigers alongside 6’10”, 230 pound Trent Pierce, 6’10”, 215 pound Toni Bryant, and 6’9”, 230 pound Mark Mitchell. That is a lot to deal with.
Tiller transferred in for his sophomore year after starting most of the time and playing 26 minutes a night for Kansas as a freshman last year. His minutes haven’t changed that much, but his production has. Tiller is averaging 15.7 points, 8.7 rebounds, 2.0 assists, and 2.0 blocks per game, and he’s also 6-for-12 from behind the three-point line. He was a 27% shooter on 52 attempts for the Jayhawks a year ago, so it remains to be seen if this is who he actually is now or if he’s merely on a hot streak.
Pierce is in his fourth season of college hoops, all of which have been at Missouri. He’s been in and out of the starting lineup for Dennis Gates pretty much since Day 1 on campus, but he’s been in there for the first three games of this season. He had a breakout year of 10.4 points and 3.8 rebounds per game last year, but so far this season, his minutes are down a little bit so he’s only putting up 6.7 points and a career best 5.7 rebounds per game.
Bryant is a highly regarded freshman who hasn’t exactly been taking a back seat to the slightly more experienced big guys in front of him. He’s starting off his collegiate career with 11.3 points, 5.0 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 1.0 steals, and 2.3 blocks per game.
Mitchell is only available for the Tigers because of the fifth year of eligibility lawsuits as he’s already played 68 games in two seasons at Duke and another 66 games at Missouri for the past two campaigns. As a Tiger, he’s averaging 15.9 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 2.8 assists per game. Mitchell’s three-point shooting has been all over the place across his career, peaking at 39% last season after back-to-back seasons at Duke and Mizzou where he connected on less than 28% of his attempts. All of that came after a freshman year at Duke where he hit 35% of his tries.
I’m going to guess that while all these guys start together, or at least have started all three games so far together, they might not actually play together a lot of the time. Tiller is averaging nearly 30 minutes a night this season, but none of the other guys are north of 23 per contest. There’s also 7’5”, 260 pound junior Trent Burns, who is averaging less than 9 minutes per game to this point of the year. Still, if the Foul Trouble Demons come to haunt the Tigers, that’s one more guy that can just absorb minutes if need be.
Shooters? Through three games, Missouri is hitting over 43% of their three-pointers. That’s pretty great, although that’s probably not going to last forever. Belmont led the country last year at 41% and they were the only team at 40% or better. In fact, Missouri’s season average is hinging on lighting it up against their two buy opponents and then making a merely average/acceptable number of threes — 33% — against Saint Louis. That’s probably not why they lost to the Billikens, shooting 45% on twos probably is a bigger reason not to mention SLU shooting 56% on threes. The fact of the matter is that in their one game against a comparable opponent that also happened to be outside their home gym, Mizzou wasn’t quite as great as they were in the other two contests.
Bryson Tiller, yes, the big dude mentioned earlier, is hitting half of his 4.0 attempts per game so far this season. Same goes for Kennard Davis, although he’s up at 5.3 attempts per game. Davis hit just 32% for BYU last season, but he was a 35% shooter across two seasons at Southern Illinois before that.
Jason Crowe is the guy that Marquette probably has to most worry about in terms of letting it fly. The 6’4” top 10 freshman recruit is really letting it rip from deep, firing off 7.3 three-point attempts per game. Here’s the catch: 7 attempts against Cleveland State, made four of them. 8 attempts against SIUE, made four of them.
Seven attempts against Saint Louis, missed all of them.
11 two-point attempts against Saint Louis, missed eight of them.
On balance, Crowe is hitting 36% this season. But he’s been running hot and cold through three games, and in fact, alternating hot and cold games. That trend probably won’t hold here, but if SLU came up with something to frustrate Crowe’s shooting, maybe Marquette can mimic that.
What To Watch For: We could try and talk for a while and be clever about how Marquette matches up against Missouri in this department or that department or how is Marquette going to deal with Missouri’s size, or whatever, blah blah blah.
We’re going to skip to brass tacks here.
Marquette has six non-conference games that matter for building an NCAA tournament profile this season. They have already played one of them and kind of got run out of the Crisler Center after taking a little bit of a lead on Michigan early. That’s 0-1, which isn’t fun, but it was on the road, it was the first real challenge game of the season, and there’s five more chances to make a point to the selection committee. Right now, before tipoff against Missouri, that Michigan game doesn’t really matter. Learn whatever lessons you need to learn from it, and move on. It’s in the past.
Well, it’s in the past as long as Marquette doesn’t look like garbage again on Sunday.
Yes, mathematically, 0-2 with four more chances isn’t that big of a deal. Heck, if Marquette loses because Jason Crowe throws in a 35 footer at the horn to end a game that was never three points in either direction, eh, that’s life. You fought valiantly, and as a litmus test for where you are after the Michigan mess, that’s not too bad. If Marquette beats the Tigers, even better.
But if Marquette gets run out of the United Center — for the second straight season! — then it is time to start activating all kinds of alarm bells and sirens.
Even more specifically: If Nigel James continues to look like he was just introduced to the game of basketball on Halloween, the Marquette season officially hits Three Alarm Fire status just four games in.
Nigel James, a preseason All-Big East First Teamer, a guy who is in the conversation for preseason All-American honors, a guy who I theorized could play his way into being National Player of the Year if everything falls right for him and for the Golden Eagles this season, was so bad against Michigan that Shaka Smart benched him after just 18 minutes of action.
He is 1-for-10 on threes this season and has missed at least his last seven in a row because he’s 0-7 in the last two games. He’s shooting just 31% on two-pointers, including missing all seven of his attempts inside the arc against Michigan. He committed four turnovers in just 18 minutes against the Wolverines when I noted his turnover problems and their impact on Marquette’s season in his player preview.
Yes, Royce Parham was bad against Michigan, yes, Sananda Fru was bad against Michigan, yes to whatever else went wrong in that game that you’re thinking about. Nigel James didn’t quite feel very Nigel James-y in Marquette’s first two games, but MU was up big in both and if he wasn’t looking to score because he was helping build up his teammates along the way — 11 assists in the first two games in just 44 minutes — that’s not a terrible way to go about things.
Everyone needs to be a lot better against Mizzou than they were against Michigan. There’s not a future lottery pick on this roster, so everyone has to do a lot of little things to make this work.
But the guy that made everyone say “ah, well, Marquette has that guy, and he’ll be better as a sophomore than he was as a freshman, I trust they’ll be improved in 2026-27 as a result,” that guy needs to prove that he’s still that guy. That’s what I’m most watching for on Sunday.
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