Mizzou fans received some much-needed good news ahead of Monday night’s matchup against Illinois.
Eli Hoff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Jayden Stone and Trent Pierce were “on track to be
ready for SEC play barring setbacks,” setting up the return of two players that have either played or were expected to play key roles for the team this year.
The Tigers’ performance later that night in a 91-48 blowout loss to Illinois underlined why the news is so important for a team that severely underwhelmed during their non-conference schedule.
The 43-point defeat was the largest in Braggin’ Rights history, and the biggest loss during Dennis Gates’ tenure at Mizzou. The Tigers’ 48 points was also their lowest scoring total under Gates.
Monday night’s loss worsened a troubling trend for the MU offense that’s taken root since Stone’s injury in late November.
The Tigers put up 93 points per game over their first six contests, but the team has averaged just 75.7 points in the seven games since. A large part of Mizzou’s struggles to generate offense have come from a sharp dip in its perimeter shooting.
MU has seen its three-point field goal percentage drop from 45 percent to 31 percent since Stone, who shot 41.7 percent from beyond the arc in his six games this season, left the rotation. Gates used the analogy of his team as a puzzle in the postgame press conference, pointing to Pierce and Stone as key (missing) pieces.
“Our entire team has been put together a certain way. When you lose a guy [in Trent Pierce] that has not played this season, and he’s a starter in the SEC, that’s an advantage with length, shooting ability,” he said, “Jayden Stone, the same way. Look at his [shooting] percentage; you have to have both Stone and [Jacob] Crews in the game to open up things.”
The Tigers have managed to tread water with their perimeter shooting due to the presence of Crews, who entered Braggin’ Rights ranked fourth in the nation with a 52.9 three-point field goal percentage. But when the graduate wing has an off night like his 1-for-9 performance from the field in St. Louis, MU lacks the perimeter firepower to compensate with its current group of healthy players.
Anthony Robinson II is Mizzou’s only starter outside of Crews hitting shots from beyond the arc at a rate greater than 30 percent this season. Luke Northweather has shot 44.8 percent from three, but the Tigers’ three other key forwards — Jevon Porter, Mark Mitchell and Shawn Phillips Jr. — are a combined 22 percent.
Those figures played a role in Gates abandoning the ‘jumbo’ lineup that MU began the season with, but shifts in the rotation over the last few weeks have only had a limited impact as most of the team’s forwards continue to clog up spacing, no matter what combination of players they are paired with.
Pierce, who has not appeared in a game this season, might provide Mizzou with the versatility and spacing it needs at the forward spot. The 6-foot-10 forward hit 33 percent of his shots from beyond the arc last year.
Getting back to full health could also help the team lift its bench production up to the levels seen earlier in the year. The Tigers averaged 38.5 bench points over their first eight games, but that number has fallen to 22.6 since then.
“It’ll give guys opportunities to get rest. It’ll keep the guys that’s on the court in those spurts able to compete at the highest level, versus taking a play off here and there because of fatigue; not because they’re trying to,” Gates said of deepening his rotation once the injured players return, “But fatigue will get you foul trouble, will take away some aggression.”
The likely returns of Stone and Pierce, alongside Jevon Porter (who was out with a lower leg injury against the Illini but is not expected to miss significant time), comes at a crucial time for Gates’ squad. MU closes its non-conference schedule with a 10-3 record and zero signature wins.
Mizzou enters its SEC schedule 0-3 in Quad 1 and Quad 2 games, and the team’s most compelling resume point is a Quad 3 win over Minnesota. That’s something the Tigers will need to fix during conference play, and an SEC schedule gives them an opportunity to secure enough high-level wins to salvage their tournament resume.
MU currently has 11 Quad 1 games (matchups against teams ranked 1-30 in the NET at home, 1-50 on a neutral site, and 1-75 on the road) lined up during SEC play, including five next month. The first two of those opportunities come in Mizzou’s opening pair of SEC games, a home matchup against Florida and a road game at Kentucky.
The Tigers have nearly two weeks to get Stone and Pierce healthy for the conference opener and begin taking steps to reach the potential that earned the team votes in the preseason top-25 poll.
“If you’re healthy, your team can get better. But if you have so many moving parts throughout the season, in this early phase, you’re not going to take the jump yet,” Gates said, “And I’m excited about getting our team together and being prepared to take the jump.”
Mizzou’s remaining schedule gives the team a plausible path into the NCAA Tournament, but it’s one that has significantly narrowed since the beginning of the season. The Tigers have just five games remaining against teams they ranked ahead of in the KenPom ratings before Monday’s defeat, creating pressure to quickly make the jump Gates envisions.
After an unexpectedly bumpy non-conference slate, MU should soon have the conditions it needs to look more like the squad many expected before the season began. But it remains to be seen if that improvement can materialize quickly enough to make a difference in the team’s season outlook.
