No. 22 Missouri regresses on offense, boards in ugly loss at Texas

Eli Hoff, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Jan 22, 2025

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

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

As the scoreline suggests, the game was a rock fight, leading 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 string together offense, but it was the host Longhorns closing the game on a 12-3 run that sank the visitors.

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 sea legs. Gone was the rebounding prowess, the 3-point shooting, the relentless defense that turned into steady offense.

Instead, MU touched down in snowy Austin, Texas, with a penchant for fouling Longhorns and missing shots.

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

Texas outrebounded Mizzou 39-31, but the difference was especially egregious on the offensive glass. The Longhorns grabbed 14 offensive rebounds for 20 second-chance points — one-third of their total scoring output. The Tigers got only eight offensive rebounds for four second-chance points.

"Second-chance points is the difference in the game," MU coach Dennis Gates told the Tiger Radio Network after the game. "Every category was pretty much similar."

While UT won, it did so behind an offensive outing 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 game-time for either team to score, with Texas getting the ball to finally drop through the net on a free throw.

By the time 11 minutes and two seconds had elapsed, 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 by the same point in that game.

UT unlocked its 3-point shot 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 timeout from Gates, 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 make from distance of the game. He then pulled down a tough defensive rebound and drew a foul in the process, earning two free throws, which he made.

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

Previously, MU's lowest-scoring half of the season had been its 31-point output in the second half of Saturday's win over Arkansas.

The Tigers seemed to have turned things around early in the second half. They took a 38-36 lead off 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 that lead for 10 minutes — and into the final five minutes of the game. MU had been 14-0 this season when carrying a lead into the final five minutes.

But an offense that was flickering on and off all night tripped its breaker for good. Bates had put a Texas defender on a poster with a big-time dunk with 5:43 to go to put Missouri up by three points.

Freshman point guard T.O. Barrett — who played 12 minutes, his second-highest workload of the season — hit one free throw with 4:01 on the clock. That shot broke a 49-all deadlock for the visitors' last lead of the night.

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

Bates hit a layup with 18 seconds left — 5 minutes and 25 seconds after the team's last field goal — but that was in garbage time. A sequence that involved an unnecessary offensive foul by center Josh Gray had functionally ended the game a couple of possessions prior.

Fouls were another point of concern 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 prompted Gates to operate experimentally with his rotation.

While defending a lead during 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 onto their ranked status at 5 p.m. Saturday against No. 16 Mississippi (15-3, 4-1 SEC). In the meantime, Ole Miss plays Wednesday against Texas A&M.