Mizzou vs Illini


Will Mizzou blow out the Illini?

Nope. Gates doesn’t know defense.

Very excited for this game. Hopefully Mosley can play.

Have you ever had a good thing to say about a Missouri team?

I see Mosley still hasn't gotten his money yet. Still not playing.

Not a bad first half.

This has to be the reason why, but I don't know why he'd play at all. Also, I'd sue the living **** out of whoever wasn't paying me.

D'Moi Hodge has been a huge pick up. Definitely wasn't expecting this amount of scoring from a guy that came over from Cleveland St. Hell he's playing better here than he ever did there.

Right now we are kicking the shit out of Illinois. Hopefully they finish this off.

I’ve heard that he kept being late for practice and some of the games, do you think that might be why they didn’t want to pay him?

Good call….


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Happy to help. It was a desperation heave.

Hasn't got his NIL cash and car that was promised to him. Straight from a great source with the Missouri State program.

Sounds like he wasn’t holding up his end and they reneged.

Coach Gates said it had nothing to do with disciplinary reasons, so I find it pretty hard to believe this. Also it's coming from you and you're a shit stirrer, so I definitely know it's not true.

Good job exposing the B10 frauds so far.

If the NIL stuff is true, Mizzou would be wise to make sure that’s paid up. That’d be an absolute death knell to future recruits, so entirely stupid to the point where I have a hard time believing that story.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Mannnn it’s definitely crazy out here. ���� <a href="https://t.co/dlOfBPwSOi">https://t.co/dlOfBPwSOi</a></p>&mdash; Isiaih mosley (@Isiaihletrellm1) <a href="https://twitter.com/Isiaihletrellm1/status/1603032006849347585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Gates is so much better than that clown Cuonzo.

Well it is Mizzou after all.

Tremendous win

Welp! Game isn't over but Mizzou looking good right now against UK.

Good start

It's nice to get excited about Mizzou BB again. I think I've watched them more this year already than the last 5 years combined.

Good half but I feel like the game is 6-8 points closer than it should be

I agree. Missing layups and free throws will catch up to you. I would expect UK to come out strong for the 2nd half. Will Mizzou be able to weather that?

where the **** did this team come from ROFL

****ing Refs ….everyone saw that was off Kentucky but the Refs


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yeah that was ****ed, how did they not review that shit?

they immediately hit a 3 after that when they should have lost possession

That’s why it’s imperative that Mizzou stay ahead by double digits, if they let Kentucky close in the SEC refs will steal the game from them and hand it to Kentucky.

Great game by the Tigers tonight. Kentucky didn't know what hit 'em.

Fun win. Different team than we’ve seen the last two coaches. Defense is getting so much better.

great win for the program

This team is fun to watch….they are 2-1 against ranked teams and kicked the living shit out of the 2 they beat.


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And they run an actual OFFENSE.

With guys that protect and pass the all and everything.

Man Cuonzo was a hack.

The score does not reflect the game. MU rolled them all night up and down the court.


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I'm not gonna be the 'we want 'bama' guy, but the game we played against Kansas isn't representative of this teams ability. They're not a top 10 team, IMO - but they're a top 20 team and can put a scare into anyone.

Especially if Kobe continues to look like a go-to scorer and they can find some consistency from the outside.

Cuonzo told us himself that he didn’t care about winning.

***Official 2022-2023 Missouri Tigers Men's Basketball***
 

I’ll take top 20 at this point. I think they can be top 15.


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I fear that this team goes as far as Kobe goes. They need another player or two to step up when Kobe is having a off night. Right now I like Hodge and Carter. I wish the Mosley issue would clear up, whatever that is about.

Not sure how they missed that one; it was CLEAR.

We absolutely struck gold with Dennis Gates. Love his demeanor, and the results - other than the KU game which now appears to be an aberration - speak for themselves. What a fun team to watch. I'm completely shocked at how quickly Gates has turned this thing around.

13 games into Gates’ tenure, we are more relevant than we’ve been than the last two shit coaches combined.

I'll go as far as to say the last 3 coaches...

If you all have never visited rupprafters message board after a loss I think you should. They’ll be so so salty.

Wildcat Lair. :LOL:

Hit ‘em up boys. You troll with the best of them and they’ll react with the grace and understanding as you can expect from the pride of Kentucky.

Sucks that my UK friend moved to India, would love to razz him a bit.

Rams Fan lost LMAO

Rams fan is a good guy. I am surprised he’s not in here though.

This was talked about in the MU Football Thread (which, is now just the thread for KU-MU crosstalk with KSU fans and Billay thrown in, apparently). But it seemed like the scale of that game took you out of it early, add in Dick giving his best Larry Legend impression and it was over before it began.

What I will say is that if you all keep it up I want nothing to do with a first weekend matchup with you in the tourney. That matchup would have way too much attention early on and this time I think your boys would be ready from the whistle.

DJ was right, KU came out of the gates so hot that Mizzou just panicked.

Dennis Gates……

https://i.imgflip.com/mrn7j.jpg

How about this?

https://sports.yahoo.com/college-bas...conference=SEC

He is a thin skinned putz. He always ducks out when his team lays an egg.

Congrats on taking out Kentucky. Glad y'all are rolling now. Keep it up!

I think my favorite thing about Gates is the way he pieces guys together. He clearly went shopping in the portal for specific skillsets.

Hodge and Honor have experience and add great shooting touch from deep.

Gholston (and Mosely if that situation ever shakes out) is a big, physical guard who can get to the rim and finish tough chances/draw fouls. Pure scorer types (that you can kick the ball to when the shot clock is winding down and you need to create).

Carter gave him an energy and pick-and-pop big with some versatility.

Just a really nice job. I don't think CuonzNO ever really looked at how his pieces would/could work together.

It's also hilarious that, 12 games into his tenure at Mizzou, with a drastically undersized team, Gates has a team that I trust more defensively than any of CuonzNO's teams, which put up good defensive numbers due to pace more than anything.

I think he had a plan for how the pieces would fit together - it was just a bad plan.

He wanted a squad with 4 big, tough players who would dirty the game up and turn it into a slugfest with a 5th guy who could maybe bring some energy and hit a handful of contested shot.

The problem is that outside shooting and ballhandling just weren't something he thought were necessary.

Cuonzo is just a dinosaur. He's a guy who's approach might have worked before the 3-point line, I guess. But once spacing and the ability to take advantage of it became paramount, he was out there playing checkers - hell, he was playing tic-tac-toe - while others were playing chess.

He had a plan - it was just a stupid one. Y'know what it was? It was Herm-ball. It was designed to shorten games and hope you get lucky in a slugfest. Where Herm was out there hoping to win 13-10 in a league that had passed him by, Cuonzo was looking for 54-50 wins and that's just not gonna work against quality opponents. And that's when it works WELL. When it doesn't work well, it won't work against UMKC.

I dunno if Gates is Andy Reid - I suspect he isn't. But man, I'm sure glad he isn't Herm. Win or lose, it's at least a product worth watching.

Better see how they do on the road before crowning Gates just yet. Beat Wichita mainly because the Shuckheads choked at the free throw line. Beat UCF on a 30 foot prayer bank shot.

Why? It's readily apparent he's much better than the assclowns that came before him. That much is obvious based on how he's constructed the team.

You can say that he's doing a fine job without saying that the job is complete.

My major worry with this year's team is that it's a relatively old squad with a lot of experience, if not at this level. Gates had a pretty nice class this year but it was still only a 3-man class.

Meanwhile Brown, Gholston, Gomillion, Hodge, Honor and Mosley are almost certainly gone after the season. Though I think Honor will likely return w/ his extra year of Covid eligibility. I suspect Brown and Mosley will play professionally somewhere (or Mosley will take an NIL deal that someone will actually pay).

I mean that pretty much everything. DeGray isn't any good. So realistically you're looking at East, Carter and Shaw as genuine contributors returning for next year's team. Robinson, Pierce and Butler is a nice start, but those aren't players who will move the needle as freshmen, IMO. They would BADLY need Diarra to take a massive step forward. From what little we've seen, he might be more of a Mitchell Smith type of energy player with marginal skills.

It's a bit of a bummer to see a team gel so quickly in its first year together but know they aren't gonna have much time to truly build on that chemistry.

But at the very least we've seen how Gates philosophy can work and it should allow for a little more patience as he starts to build a roster for the long haul. I mean...provided the 'long haul' even exists in the free transfer/NIL era of college sports.

"Don't let perfect be the enemy of good"

Nobody is saying that this is a national championship team or a squad that's gonna win a true road game against a top 5 opponent.

But they look like a credible power 5 basketball team again. A team that has won difficult games at neutral sites at the very least. A team that, should it continue to play at/near this level, can be a Sweet 16 caliber team.

Progress is progress.

It was mid-90s Knicks-Heat.

Yeah, I almost mentioned them, but those teams actually WON some stuff.

The league at the time rewarded that style of play. It wasn't a style out of its time. The sport was trying to figure out what to do without Jordan/Bird/Magic/Barkley and essentially took its hands off the wheel for a few years while these guys took to mauling each other into submission.

One of Stern's only real missteps. It's hard to look back at that era and believe that Stern allowed that to go on as long as he did. Even the 2-3 seasons it was actually effective was long enough to set the league back for a decade.

There is some interesting data that suggests that your perception of style is based on what was stylish during your time as a young adult. Given Cuonzo's age, maybe that explains his affinity for that style of play.

Between that and the neutral zone trap, sports were brutal in 2/4 of the leagues then.

I'd argue baseball is in a similar rut with strikeouts and the three true outcomes.

This is a team you can just fall in love with. They are tenacious, tough, gritty, unselfish and play fast. It’s so nice to have a team I can finally root for. Even some of our better teams in the past had players who were cocky, selfish, lazy, etc. Which made it harder to root for even if they were good players.

Yeah, that's an excellent parallel.

Then again, a buddy of mine fits perfectly into Hamas case study. Born in the late 60s and his first real strong memory of the Chiefs is the Marty era. He bemoans the aerial nature of modern football all the time.

So I think there are folks who would argue football is in a 'rut'. I think they're in a minority in that regard.

Meanwhile baseball, who's fanbase seems to trend a little older, probably has a bunch of cranky old men like me who absolutely loathe the 'modern' game. I LOVED the analytics evolution in baseball because it dovetailed really well with my affinity for numbers and analysis. But man, it's become so data driven that the game has lost most all of its aesthetic appeal.

I’m wondering if it becomes a true problem in the eyes of the league when it’s considered a problem by multiple generations of fans (I.E your future markets). I definitely have seen the take that football is not what is was because smash mouth football and blindside hits are done, but I really haven’t seen that take espoused in folks in their 50's or younger. Basketball is similar with the three point revolution. My middle schoolers are setting up ball screens and sinking 3’s at a level I could not have imagined when I played. But has the strategy of middle school ball worsened since I played? Honestly, I think their games are much more engaging and they are all thinking at a higher level than I ever was on the court (in their league final, they fouled an opposing player when up 3 to force him to the line).

The sentiment against baseball, OTOH, has united the generations of fandom. All of my buddies and even the young analytics writers I follow (I’m 30) are all talking about the problem. A close friend of mine graduated in data analytics and he goes on and on about the problem like he’s an oldhead. The proposed solutions, however, could not be more wildly different.

I expect they'll be active in the portal again for wings and guards. And probably at least 1 big unless Diarra is progressing well.

The portal, if you're willing to work it, can really be an equalizer when you're in the middle of rebuilding the program. I'd expect something like:

Shaw/Carter/Portal guy/Portal guy/Honor as the starting 5 next year. With a few more portal guys (one big, one wing) to round things out with East and Diarra and the freshmen. DeGray probably sticks, too.

I will forever maintain that there's a silver bullet to all these stylistic issues.

Make the parks bigger. It fixes EVERYTHING.

You don't have middle infielders hitting 25 homers that travel an average of 370 ft anymore. So now you're looking for guys that will plug gaps and run. In the process, you need to find OFers that can cover all that territory so you're getting guys athletes in your OF.

Now with guys not being rewarded for mis-hitting balls, they'll take more measured approaches at the plate. Suddenly the high strike doesn't rule the day anymore and so pitchers will have to start doing more than just going fastball/slider to blow guys away. Now they need to work north and south more so you'll see a greater array of pitching styles.

And I'm not even talking Kaufman Stadium anymore. I'm talking 430 to CF, 390 to RF and LF.

Your true power hitters still put the ball out at those dimensions. But man, if you're dealing with power alleys that big, your outfielders had better be able to run or you're gonna see triples for days.

Don't rain on our parade! Just to have a glimmer of hope 13 games into a season is more than we've had in a decade plus it feels like. The Tigers are my only connection to college hoops, which means I've hardly watched NCAA BB in the last handful of years.

This is freaking FUN!

Just stop with this trash. Not even close to reality.

I'm not sure many teams are going to do much "building" anymore. With the transfer portal, just about every team is going to be year-to-year. And that stinks, but it's reality.

Hi MU basketball, thanks for embarrassing Kentucky.

It's delicious, no side eye, no sarcasm

Big game in a tough barn tonight. So far so good, except for Kobe getting two quick fouls.

Gates has been a revelation.

An amazing coach and the best part is he isn't a criminal and cheater like Toupee Bill.

7 point lead at half on the road against a borderline Top 10 team? I’ll take it.

Gotta come out with the same intensity in the second half that they started the first with. You know Arky will make a run at some point. Got to be ready for it.

And that's with Kobe on the bench for about 12 minutes. If it weren't for put-backs on offensive rebounds Arkansas would have about 10 points at halftime. Tigers need to start blocking out.

Yup, rebounding has been pretty poor.

That might be the worst call of the season ROFL

Or not . . . . . . .

Wake up, Mizzou!