In its first game in 11 days due to a temporary halt of the COVID-19 virus, Missouri is starting a bit slow. The team turned the ball more than 10 times in the first half and trailed Texas A&M 24-17 four minutes before halftime.
From there, the tigers took control and never looked back. Missouri scored the last ten points of the first half, including five from the sixth man Javon Beckett, Then he scored 8-0 and 11-0 during the first ten minutes of the first half (the last that included rare possession of seven points). In total, Missouri outperformed Texas A&M 35-10 in a 14-minute period, then dashing to a 68-52 win to bring the Tigers back up to 0.500 in SEC play.
Below is our full winning roundup, starting with five things we learned.
Jeremiah Talmon He plays the best basketball of his career. The big player showed his ability at times during the four years he spent in the Mizzou costume, but he has never maintained it in many games as he has in the last few weeks. Against Texas A&M, Tilmon scored 14 points, 10 rebounds. Across the past three Missouri matches, Tilmon has averaged 18.3 points and nine rebounds. He’s shots 73.5% of the floor since multiplayer began.
Perhaps most importantly, he stays on the ground. Tilmon has played at least 27 minutes in each of the past four matches, and played 33 minutes on Saturday. He was called for only one mistake during that time. He noted that not getting in bad trouble helped him remain aggressive in the defensive end, as he scored the three highest blocks of the season against Texas A&M. Missouri’s defense prompted the Aggies to 4-10 shootings with ball kicks.
“I’m very happy for him,” the coach said Konzo Martin He said. “The way he plays, the speed, the poise, the maturity, the things he says at rallies and all of that, makes you feel proud as a coach that he makes progress every year. You start to see his hard work pay off.”
On the other end of the floor, Tilmon sounded authoritative and dominant, two words that were not used much to describe him during his college career. Texas A&M teamed up nearly twice every time he touched the ball on the low block, yet Tilmon consistently beat the double-team, either by scoring through or passing by him. He made five attempts out of six attempts to hit a field Saturday.
Tilmon said, “When I get the ball, I make sure I don’t bounce the ball or go crazy, because as you all said earlier, the double team is coming. I’m sure I’m looking for this faint and the way they come from, so try to hurry up and get a basket , things like that. So yeah, I’m just being calm, and I’m not trying to force anything at all. “
Telmon described the past three matches as the best extension of his football career. Martin attributed the hotline to all the work he did during training – maintaining his body shape and health, learning about defenses, and knowing the whereabouts of his teammates. However, he thinks Tilmon can still play better.
Martin said, “If I was a gambler – not a gambler – I’d say it’s 75 percent now, the way he plays.”
* When Beckett plays well, that’s still a good thing for Missouri. The Tigers are now 11-1 over the past two seasons when Beckett has scored double figures, including 4-0 this year.
Beckett scored the Missouri runway at the end of the first half by dropping three-pointers and mid-range crossings on back-to-back possessions. In the second half, he scored a goal en route to the basket, bouncing back and baseline for playing off limits. His ability to guard opposition strikers allowed Missouri to go with a smaller line-up at times, helping him find eight points in the transfer during the second half after scoring just two such points in the first.
Martin said physical matches like Saturday’s game usually bode well for Beckett, who has a strong nose. And when Beckett does start, that bodes well for Missouri as a whole.
Martin said, “In most cases, when it’s a physical brand, that’s Javon Alley. We want him to be that kind of guy, and he’s also one of those guys who can get smaller fourth.”
* When you’re playing Missouri at its best, the Tigers are balanced and are able to find some easy shots around the edge. Beckett and Tilmon weren’t just off a record double-digit on Saturday; Great guard Drew Smith, Who recently struggled, led the way with 15 points. Smith also added six rebounds, six assists, and four super-balls. Kobe Brown They also broke in nine points, with seven points in the second half. Xavier Benson Seven added Mitchell Smith Record six.
Martin was particularly complementary to Brown, who added five rebounds and two blocks. Brown’s performance was described as his best match in Mizzou’s costume.
“I thought Kobe played an exceptional match on both sides of the ball,” he said.
Finding more scoring threats other than Tilmon only helped break Texas A&M’s scarce defense. Martin said, last week, the coaching staff showed the players how the opponents were cooperating so aggressively with Telmon, indicating that this created opportunities for the other players to lead to the edge. When the Tigers, who once again shot around their season average of 27.3 percent out of a three-point range, found those indoor opportunities, crime thrived. Missouri outperformed Texas A&M 36-13 in paint. Twenty-two of those points came in the last 20 minutes.
Martin said, “This is who we are.” “We are a team that shares the ball, we play together. It doesn’t matter who leads us in scoring. They really enjoy playing with each other, being with each other. (Benson) He didn’t have one of his best matches but he was the best fan on the sidelines. They brought the right things. Man, they appreciate the right things, and all they want to do is win basketball. “
* Not only did Missouri find a spark at the end of the attack after a slow start, but the Tigers settled on the defensive end and choked the Texas A&M. The Aggies, who came on Saturday with a 29.9% shot from behind the arc, scored four of the first six field goals from three points and 10 from 21 from the ground to start the match. They then missed their next seven shots from deep and 14 of the 15 field goals total.
Martin said the crew did not make any defensive adjustments; The team settled down and eliminated some early mistakes. He said Drew Smith, in particular, gave up about 10 points early due to defensive malfunctions. But once the team got into the defensive end, it looked like a defense Martin coached. Texas A&M’s 52 points represent a season low. Tigers now hold 6 out of 10 opponents under 40 percent from fire.
“He settled down and played basketball,” Martin said of the defensive transformation. “Don’t allow crime to dictate how you defend.”
* The last time Missouri took the word, he made a 14-point lead in the first 15 minutes before watching that progress evaporate in the second half. The Tamil Tigers eventually lost by 15. On Saturday represents inverse. Missouri started slow but dominated the match late in the first half and never relinquished control.
It gave Texas A&M University Missouri a chance to falter, too. With about five minutes remaining, Aggies scored eight straight points to reduce Missouri’s lead to 10, and possibly trigger flashbacks from the previous game. But Martin asked for a time to stop the run and the Tigers responded quickly. Brown, who scored only five points against Mississippi, hit a short jump outside the time-out, then the next possession he led and scored. On the next defensive trip, he gets stolen and finds Drew Smith to break the ball throw.
Tilmon admitted that a second-half collapse against Mississippi was on the team’s mind when Texas A&M turned it on. The difference this time, he said, is that players remind each other to stay aggressive.
“Coach Martin was stressing someone out to make sure that when we got off track and when we had already started and started coming back, someone knew we were not playing as hard as we normally would,” said Telmon. “So we all make sure we were just saying, ‘Like, keep playing, because they’re just getting back in and sort of going down, let’s just keep going up. Things like that.’
Room for improvement: The only player who didn’t have a good game on Saturday was Mark Smith. Smith continued his recent decline by scoring just three points from a 1-8 shot. He missed his first five attempts on three points. Having averaged 17.5 points per game across Missouri’s past four games, he averaged just 6.8 points in the last six games.
Martin has made it clear that he wants Smith, who is still shooting 36 percent behind the arc in the season, to keep shooting all three when he’s open. He said the Tigers need those shots to fall, because when Smith does the shots, the rest of his game improves as well.
Martin said, “If he’s open to three every time, we need that ball to go up.” “Because he can shoot the ball. We need the ball to go to Mark because he’s a guy who works very hard, works on his game, presses himself if his shot doesn’t go down. … He’s a different player, a player when his shots are dropped, because he’s defending on a different level, he’s bouncing off,” He does all of those things. “
The star of the game: It’s a tough call between Tilmon and Drew Smith, who bounced back from a tough game on Saturday, but we have to go with the big guy. As Martin said after the match, there was no question who was the most dominant player on Earth on Saturday. Tilmon kept Missouri afloat with his eight points in the first half and Tigers beat Texas A&M by 23 points when he was on the ground. In the past three matches, he looked like an all-conference caliber player he hoped to see for four years.
Martin said: “If this man is, there is not much in America that is better.” “There might be some players with the same quality. But a high level of players on either side of the ball, then doing it efficiently without pollution … really cool.”
what does that mean: A win over Texas A&M won’t jump off the Missouri resume, but it could give the Tigers some much-needed momentum after a dwindling loss and team activity stalled later. If Missouri is to seriously compete for fourth place in the league, it needs to sponsor business against teams like Texas A&M, and the Tigers did so on Saturday.
Quotable: “It was physical. It was one of those, you start with some boxing gloves, and eventually you will play some ball. But it was fun to be a part of.” – Konzo Martin
