Missouri basketball was once a Final Four-caliber team. An early March Madness exit hasn't settled
WICHITA, Kan. — Mizzou forward Mark Mitchell and point guard Anthony Robinson II had towels draped over their heads, their makeshift blindfolds shutting out the season’s last locker room.
With his elbow on his knee and his fist in a bunch, knuckles holding up his head at the brow, tears are cresting the corners of Trent Pierce’s eyes. He’s far from only one in the Missouri basketball locker room.
Next to Pierce, Jeremy Sanchez can’t stop the tears from flowing. Wherever you look, there are grieving faces staring at the roof or the carpet or anything to distract them from the doldrums of what’s next.
It’s the scene of the last words of the last chapter — a book the Tigers aren’t quite ready to shelve.
Thirty minutes after a dream year ended, reality is refusing to take root.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet fully,” Mizzou wing Jacob Crews said. “This is gonna be a pit in my stomach for a bit, because I know we left so much out on the table.”
No. 11 Drake beat the 6-seeded Tigers with a 67-57 win Thursday night in the Round of 64 of the NCAA Tournament, ending Mizzou’s season and with it a year that once promised so much more.
On Thursday night deep in INTRUST Bank Arena, that squad is wrestling with a brand-new reality: The dance is over, and it lasted just one song.
“I believe we never hit our peak,” Pierce said. “I believe we had a lot more to bring. I still believe we’re a Final Four team. We didn't show it today, but I still believe it.”
The Tigers (22-12) told anyone who would listen that it had the makings of a Final Four squad. They ended wins — and there were plenty to enjoy not too long ago — by putting their fingers over their mouths in a hushing motion.
Who would have argued after the Alabama win in mid-February that Missouri didn’t have a ceiling as high as any other team? Twenty-nine days later, by way of Drake, the dream is over.
What happened?
For one:
“Their ball went in more than ours,” said Tamar Bates, who played his last game in college. “They shot a better percentage in the first half. They made some 3s off of one leg. I mean, it's called March Madness for a reason.”
Another, and in with a much broader scope:
“I mean, we had a great year,” Bates said. “We beat the odds. I mean, after last year, nobody really thought we were going to be anything. Nobody thought we were gonna respond. And we made history in terms of a turnaround from one year to the next. You know, no team in college basketball has ever done what we were able to do.
“We're a team that left our mark on Mizzou. And despite coming up short and obviously in the moment right now, everybody that's around the program, in the program and even our fan base may be a little sad and down, but at the end of the day, we were able to do this season. In a few days, (hopefully) everybody is able to look back and know that we gave it our all every time we went out there to play.”
That’s some prescient perspective less than an hour after his career ended.
Would anyone reasonably have predicted this season 12 months ago, when Mizzou drove home from the SEC Tournament with an 0-19 mark in conference play that an NCAA Tournament berth would follow?
“We made it to March. I think we woke up a lot of people,” Crews said. “We earned respect. We earned it. We weren’t given anything.”
Drake did what it needed to beat Mizzou, and nobody from Dennis Gates to Missouri’s players shied away from that postgame.
The Bulldogs shut the Tigers’ scorers down, holding Caleb Grill 1-of-7 from 3-point range, Mitchell 2-of-8 from inside the arc and Missouri as a whole to a 33.3% night from the field. Mizzou was 0-9 this season when it was held below 42.1%.
The Bulldogs turned Mizzou over 17 times. MU is 4-5 when it has more than 14 giveaways.
Still, the Tigers made it a fight.
MU trailed by 15 points with 12:40 left in the game. The Tigers made it a one-point game by the 4:28 mark and appeared to have the Bulldogs rattled with a 10-0 run before some late, empty possessions and defensive miscues let Drake pull back ahead.
And now, there’s a lot of what-coulda-been about this Mizzou team, which beat Florida on the road and Alabama in a shootout and Kansas in the Border War.
Missouri will not be making it to San Antonio for the Final Four. The first round in Wichita was the terminus for this set of Tigers.
The Tigers grappled with it immediately.
"It hurts," Robinson said, "to swallow this pill."
It will take some time to accept.
“We're a Final Four team. We are,” Crews said. “You know, when we were playing our best basketball, we're the best in the country. We've shown it. We beat the number-one teams. We beat teams that people said we couldn't beat. I mean, it's just one of those things that you’ve gotta live with.
“ … We had one heck of a season, one heck of a crowd breaking out. I think we brought basketball to CoMo again — to where it deserves to be. I think it's gonna happen again next year.”
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Missouri's loss to Drake, March Madness exit leaves lingering what-if
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