No. 22 Mizzou regresses on offense, crashes in loss at Texas

The bad outweighed the good, and yes, it was ugly.

Freshly ranked and riding a four-game winning streak, the No. 22 Missouri men’s basketball and ran into its worst offensive showing of the year, losing Tuesday night at Texas, 61-53.

As the scoreline suggests, the game was a close game that led to the Tigers’ fewest points scored in a game this season as they shot 31.3% from the field and 18.2% from behind the 3-point line.

Both Mizzou (15-4, 4-2 Southeastern Conference) and Texas (13-6, 2-4) struggled to get their offense together, but it was the host Longhorns who closed out the game on a 12-3 run that lowered the guests.

It was a reunion between two former Big 12 foes and, in many ways, a regression for a Missouri team that seemed to be finding its SEC legs. Gone was the rebounding ability, the 3-point shooting, the relentless defense that turned into a steady offense.

Instead, MU landed in snowy Austin, Texas, with a penchant for fouling the Longhorns and a lack of shots.

Shooting guard Tamar Bates — one of four Missouri players who made more than one shot — led the team with 10 points.

Texas outshot Mizzou 39-31, but the difference was especially stark on the offensive glass. The Longhorns grabbed 14 offensive rebounds for 20 second-chance points – a third of their total scoring output. The Tigers got just eight offensive rebounds for four second-chance points.

“Second chances are the difference in the game,” MU coach Dennis Gates told the Tiger Radio Network after the game. “Each category was pretty much the same.”

While UT won, behind an offensive scheme it did only marginally better than its opponent: Texas shot 34% from the field and 20% from 3-point range.

It took more than 3 1/2 minutes of playing time for either team to score, with Texas finally getting the ball to fall through the net on a free throw.

By the time 11 minutes and two seconds had passed, the Tigers and Longhorns had combined for 16 points. For reference, the last time Missouri and Texas played each other in football — the 2017 Texas Bowl — there were 14 points on the board at the same point in that game.

UT locked up its 3-point shooting down the stretch of the first half, and a back-to-back pair of treys gave it a 10-point lead with 1:57 before halftime. That prompted a Gates timeout, and guard Caleb Grill delivered the kind of timely sequence that has made him the Tigers’ valuable sixth man in SEC play.

Grill drained a 3-pointer out of Gates’ timeout, Missouri’s first mark from distance of the game. He then pulled down a tough defensive rebound and fouled in the process, earning two free throws that he made.

Texas still got one more bucket before halftime, leading 32-25 at the half.

Previously, MU’s lowest scoring half of the season had been its 31 points in the second half of Saturday’s win over Arkansas.

The Tigers appeared to have turned things around early in the second half. They took a 38-36 lead after a 6-0 scoring run that saw forward Trent Pierce drain a 3 and point guard Anthony Robinson II get to the free throw line.

Missouri held the lead for 10 minutes — and into the final five minutes of the game. MU had been 14-0 this season when he took the lead into the final five minutes.

But an offense that flickered on and off all night sparked forever. Bates had put a Texas defender on a poster with a big dunk with 5:43 left to put Missouri up by three points.

Freshman point guard TO Barrett — who played 12 minutes, his second-highest workload of the season — hit a free throw with 4:01 on the clock. That shot broke a 49-all deadlock for the visitors’ final lead of the night.

Point guard Tony Perkins chipped in another free throw with 1:42 left in the game, but by then Texas was on a 7-0 run.

Bates hit a layup with 18 seconds left — 5 minutes, 25 seconds after the team’s final field goal — but it was in garbage time. A sequence involving an unnecessary offensive foul by center Josh Gray had functionally ended the game a few possessions earlier.

Fouls were another problem for Missouri, which was whistled for 26 of them to Texas’ 18. Robinson, Pierce and Perkins each finished with four fouls.

The combination of foul trouble and general offensive struggles led Gates to operate experimentally with his rotation.

While defending a lead for a critical stretch of the second half, he deployed a lineup consisting of Robinson, Barrett, Grill, freshman forward Marcus Allen and third-year forward Aidan Shaw. That combination had never played together in a game this season, and the back-court trio of Robinson, Barrett and Grill hadn’t even logged a possession together before.

The Tigers will look to hold on to their ranked status at 17 Saturday against no. 16 Mississippi (15-3, 4-1 SEC). Meanwhile, Ole Miss plays Texas A&M on Wednesday.