Lineup Performance: Missouri vs. Lindenwood

Over his first two years on the job, Missouri coach Dennis Gates cultivated a reserved sideline manner, wearing an expressionless face with hands shoved in his suit pockets.

Well, that staid mask slipped on Wednesday against Lindenwood.

Almost two minutes into the second half, Aidan Shaw snared an inbounds pass and tried to post up. Yet the junior failed to notice Lions guard Anias Futrell digging down from the wing to strip the ball away for the Tigers’ 13^th turnover of the night. As Lindenwood pushed up the floor, Gates turned to the scorer’s table.

“God—-n it!” Bates barked. “F—k!” 

His mood wasn’t any better 40 seconds later. After Marques Warrick canned a 3-ball, Tamar Bates lazily backpedaled on defense and ill-positioned to stop Futrell from attacking the rim after a hit-ahead pass, leading to a foul on Josh Gray. Gates wheeled to face his assistant coaches.�

“That’s bulls—t,” he said. 

While Futrell capped his 3-point play, Gates summoned Bates for a swap and short lecture. And he kept using a quick hook. Gates lifted Jacob Crews for failing to sprint back on the break with 12:58 left. Anthony Robinson II took a seat four minutes later after committing a needless clear-path foul. Gates didn’t put it aside in garbage time, either, yanking freshman T.O. Barrett for not running the wing hard enough after Tren Pierce forced a steal. 

So, rest assured that you weren’t the only one frustrated watching MU’s 81-61 victory. 

As Sam Snelling noted in Study Hall, the Tigers’ lost the ball-handling battle to a team picked near the bottom of the Ohio Valley Conference. Worse, many turnovers came when the Tigers played on the break. Consider this: Lindenwood scored 11 points off turnovers committed when MU was in transition. 

The Tigers were often laggards getting back on defense. And once Caleb Grill was carted off with a neck injury, the Tigers shot 5 of 22 from beyond the 3-point arc. As you’ll see in a moment, the Tigers’ final margin stemmed from three runs totaling 11:27 of action. Otherwise, Lindenwood won the remaining 28 minutes. 

The Tigers’ lethargy meant it underperformed the expected scoreline by eight points. Several players stepped up to push MU through, but applauding or singling out any combination for praise is hard. 

Mizzou spent the first five minutes struggling to value the ball. Then, the Tigers’ transition defense was putrid for the next five minutes while it traded buckets with the Lions. Perversely, the flagrant foul on Grill gave MU its first hint of separation with 9:57 left in the first half. 

Finally, MU stretched the lead to double-digits with four minutes left until the break, popping off an 8-0 run capped by a Marques Warrick 3-pointer. To his credit, Gates stuck with four members of that lineup – Robinson, Warrick, Bates, and Shaw – coming out of the locker room. It stretched the lead to 41-27, but then came Shaw’s turnover and Bates’ laissez-faire attitude to getting back. 

When Gates parked Crews for his sin defending the break, he inserted Trent Pierce. The sophomore’s energy was the crucial additive to a small-ball lineup. When he sailed in for a putback dunk, it triggered a decisive 10-2 run that also saw Pierce soar to snatch a Robinson lob for a dunk on the break. 

Isolating lineups reinforces the sporadic nature of momentum. As I noted earlier, three spurts decided this game. Unsurprisingly, the lineups behind them led the way in floor time. Otherwise, only one other group had a scoring margin better than plus-4. 

Again, the trifecta in Study Hall is reflected here. Tony Perkins quietly put together 18 points, four rebounds and two steals, doing most of his damage at the foul line. Yet it was Warrick, who pumped in 17 points and three rebounds, who helped power the night’s best groups. Finally, Pierce’s hyper-efficient scoring (12 points on six shots) and rebounding did enough to backfill for Grill’s absent production on the wing. 

Inside, Gray (+6) and Shaw (+13) did yeomen’s work snatching 11 rebounds, including five on the offensive glass. They also combined to swat four shots. Those contributions helped the Tigers yank down 15 offensive rebounds – second possessions that offset most of their giveaways. They epitomized first-shot defense that limited Lindenwood to 9 of 20 shooting inside the arc during half-court possessions and 0.656 PPP on the night against a set defense.

Sound first-shot defense, reliable rebounding, disruption without fouling: habits we yearned to see from MU during Gates’ first season. Oh, and there is enough depth where Gates can find some individual performances to overcome a flat performance by the Tigers.

However, MU sits 56h in KenPom’s ratings, four spots lower than its preseason position. It’s outperforming forecasted margins by 47 points, but it’s only played one team likely to find itself in Quad-1 territory when the NCAA unveils the NET rankings on Monday. 

MU lacks validation of its quality, a commodity some of its similarly rated SEC peers obtained in the past two weeks. Vanderbilt picked up quality wins over Nevada and Seton Hall at the Charleston Classic. Georgia knocked off St. John’s on a neutral floor in the Bahamas. Ole Miss split two games with BYU and Purdue in San Diego at the Rady Children’s Invitational. And Oklahoma sits at 7-0 after scooping up three top-100 wins in as many days at the Battle for Atlantis. 

Meanwhile, the Tigers have played the weakest schedule in Division I.�

The optimist might opine that Wednesday night’s results reflect a team with enough talent and competence to overcome a lack of focus and still prevail by 20 points. They also did so while Gates fed heavy minutes to the likes of Crews, Pierce, and Marcus Allen, who still project as depth pieces in this rotation. We also witnessed Perkins put together nights that made him an All-Big Ten selection last year.

When Cal pulls into town on Tuesday, the Bears offer a better gauge for whether Wednesday was an outlier or subtle foreshadowing.