Focusing on the pair of buzzer beaters that lifted Missouri to an 88-87 victory would be the easy entry point.
Yet it’s easy to imagine another sight brought coach Dennis Gates some satisfaction on Saturday – a lead guard getting downhill.
Swapping T.O. Barrett for Anthony Robinson II isn’t an entirely unexpected move. Since MU’s turgid loss at LSU, the sophomore has steadily experienced a role expansion, while Robinson settled into a slump. It was merely a matter of whether Gates would follow through on the next causal step.
He did. And Barrett – for one day at least – vindicated the move with 21 points on 8 of 12 shooting. Eight of those attempts came at the cup, including six from on-ball touches in the half-court, punctuated by a spinning layup for a 3-point play with 1:43 remaining in regulation.
That mentality and the results it yielded make it easy to overlook Barrett’s four giveaways, bringing his average to 3.5 per game over the past four outings. Meanwhile, he’s still leaky defensively, allowing 1.2 points per possession during that same stretch. Through another lens, he needed to up his scoring output to offset allowing 13 points to the Sooners.
Throughout the season, we’ve talked about how the Tigers need one of Barrett, Boateng, or Burns to emerge as a rotational stalwart. It’s late. It’s imperfect. But maybe the Oklahoman’s making such an ascension. But it’s also tempered by Robinson stalling out, leaving Gates and his staff toggling between offense and defense.
For one day, though, it panned out.
MU’s rapid responses defined this game. Each time OU threatened to expand its lead, the Tigers were quickly able to reel the Sooners back in, including an 8-0 run over roughly two minutes after falling behind 70-64.
Isolating the worst stretches doesn’t require much effort, either.
The Sooners certainly had a go at Luke Northweather with Tae Davis and Derrion Reid, targeting the former OU player repeatedly during an 11-4 spell over 2:55 of action. Later, OU didn’t seem bothered by the presence of redshirt freshman Trent Burns anchoring the bottom of a 1-3-1 zone look. Strip out those two spans, which amounted to 5:25 of game time, and the Tigers were plus-12 in the scoring column.
While Gates has undeniably trimmed the rotation down, there are still moments where he can’t deny his urge to tinker. For example, a lineup of Barrett, Jayden Stone, Annor Boateng, Trent Pierce, and Mark Mitchell came together in a small-ball quintet. It also put up a minus-4 mark in a whopping 36 seconds. Add that to the Northweather and Burns lineups, and MU was minus-16 in barely six minutes.
I’m a pragmatist. I understand there’s a need to keep your players engaged and invested. But when minutes for deep reserves like Northweather, Burns and Boateng are so sporadic and spread out, are they doing much good for either party?
MU’s room for error is minuscule. It has shifted to a lineup where its lead guard can be loose with his handle and leaky defensively. You can say the same for Shawn Phillips Jr. in the post. Functionally, Gates has seven players he can rely on. Gates was fortunate his starting five had been dialed in enough to produce a four-point cushion when Northweather checked in.
The downstream consequences show up in position performance, too.
Take Robinson, for example. That minus-9 in 16:21 of action looks gnarly. Well, he was also on the floor for every minute of Northweather’s shift and the brief cameo by Burns. Take those out, and he’s plus-2 in a little more than 10 minutes. That doesn’t absolve Robinson of committing four fouls while being turned loose to maraud on defense, but he wasn’t that bad overall. You can apply the same logic to Stone’s minus-7 mark on the wing.
This is all a way of saying that Gates and his staff need some substitution rules.
Wandering into underwhelming lineups is never good, but it’s especially perilous in a game where OU was also routinely converting deep and contested jumpers. Sometimes, you can’t help shooting variance. But you shouldn’t magnify its impact through simple decisions in your control – like who should be on the floor and for how long.
Fortunately for MU, Barrett backed up the decision to promote him, and some outlier-level shot-making spared the Tigers from a crippling loss.
But now we get to ask another tired question: Is this sustainable?
MU’s start to SEC play increasingly looks like a dead-cat bounce. The Tigers shouldn’t apologize for picking off a pair of wounded contenders. Still, those victories are starting to look more like a commentary on the state of Florida and Kentucky than an affirmation of MU’s quality.
Mitchell continues to put up robust numbers despite absurd usage. Stone has clearly exceeded expectations. Yet Robinson’s performance is ominous if the model being used is truly “recruit, retain, and develop.” As mentioned, Barrett’s recent form is worth some conditional optimism, but neither Pierce nor Jacob Crews has taken a firm grasp on the wing. And the big man rotation is, well, questionable.
It’s also probably too soon to know if Saturday marked a turning point toward MU finding the best version of itself. It didn’t take the SEC long to decode solutions after MU’s 2-0 start. This is the third pivot Gates has tried to execute this season. Jumbo lineups are gone. The rotation is mostly healthy. And he just shook up his starting five – although Phillips persists.
Eleven games remain. MU probably needs at least seven wins to have any confidence about its NCAA Tournament prospects. And it’s not hard to spot the flaws with this latest tweak.
So, yes, revel in the Tigers coming out of the right side of late-game drama.
The nagging questions are still there on the other side.