Pourover: Can the Tigers find the best version of themselves?

Missouri got back on the right side of the narrative with a big win over Florida.

Summarized by AI ⓘ

What is the story about?

Yesterday was a mess in the SEC.

Mississippi State lost at home to Vanderbilt by a lot, Auburn beat Florida in Gainesville, Tennessee toppled the G-League All Stars in Tuscaloosa, and Texas blasted top 25 Georgia in the second half by 20.

Considering the range of results in the league, Missouri should think themselves fortunate to have Mark Mitchell sink a game ending three to beat the Oklahoma Sooners.

Despite not playing their best, and despite needing a pair of no-time-on-the-clock threes to sink

a basement Sooners basketball team, Missouri did find a way. At the end of the season, you don’t give back wins because you didn’t play all that well.

Mizzou had lost three of their last four games, including a last minute loss on Tuesday to Georgia in a game they really needed to win. For the Bulldogs it was a Quad 1 win, for Missouri it was the day they gave up the advantage of their win at Rupp. Their season wasn’t in a spiral, each of their games in SEC play were all close and they won some and they lost some. Things were competitive even though the style of play had grown to become stodgy.

After Oklahoma, Mizzou is 20 games in. They are who they are. Any expectations we had before the season are obsolete. I’m guilty of holding onto my preconceived notions of the 2025-26 Missouri Tigers, there’s part of me who still expects them to find a different gear and look like the team I expected to see. And not just the team they are.

Who they are is a team who is 4-3 in conference play, and barely in the bubble conversation. Winning against Oklahoma wasn’t so much a victory as it was a necessity. As Quentin stated already, “The calendar still reads January. The thrills of March Madness are still in the distant future, and there’s plenty of time for teams to beef up their resumes before then. But there’s an argument to be made that Mizzou needed to win this game to keep its NCAA Tournament hopes from slipping away.”

Whether Missouri is a tournament team or not remains to be seen. They’re on the path to being, at least, around the bubble. And we’re always stunned by how soft the bubble is. The truth is the NCAA selection committee has a task each to parse their way through 15 or 20 ugly resumes and about 2/3 of those teams have to get in.

Here’s what I think.

Missouri isn’t a good basketball team. Mark Mitchell is an awesome basketball player, but he doesn’t have enough around him to make up the difference between being a Tournament team and not. Jayden Stone has been good, T.O. Barrett has come on. The rest has been a mixed bag. Almost certainly Mizzou thought they would get a lot more from Anthony Robinson and that hasn’t happened.

Watching the Tigers beat the Sooners was a lot of fun. The game itself had an entertaining finish and it was great fun. It’s fun watching your team win, especially when it’s in dramatic fashion like this one. But if we’re being honest, beating a 1-5 basketball team while needing two incredibly unlikely threes to win isn’t exactly how you hoped this game would go. Missouri has struggled to offense consistently, and the defense can be hit and miss. So much so that it seemed any chance the Tigers had to make a run were stunted by the Sooners making a three.

EvanMiya.com lists a kill shot as a run of 10-0 or more. Neither team had anything quite like that. A regular run is one of 6-0, and while there were a few of those, this really was a see-saw battle. The Sooners were crushed on the glass, but they made up for it by shooting the ball so well. Missouri shot the ball so poorly they needed to be excellent on the glass.

There’s no super hyperbole to say whether or not this was an important win. It was a necessary one.

I don’t know if Mizzou is a team who can find a way to 11 or more wins in league play, that’s enough to safely land in the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers are very likely not good enough to reach that level. Can they get to 10 wins?

Nine may not be enough to get an invite, not with the weakness of the league this year. It’s still a good league, but the results are showing it’s far from great. And the quality at the top just isn’t there. A win over Florida just isn’t what it was last year. The same for a win over Auburn or Kentucky. The Tigers need to find the best version of themselves and hope that can carry them to an NCAA berth. I don’t think there is much hope for anything more from this group.