Mizzou's progress hard to find behind all the losing -- but it's there
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Any way you dissect Missouri's basketball season, "disappointing" is a description that fits. For the kindhearted, anyway.
Check out some of the lowlights: A school-record 13-game losing streak, the first 20-loss season in 48 years, last place in the SEC and, with only one game to go, zero wins on an opponent's home court. Yuck, yuck, yuck and yuck.
"You lose a lot of games, it's hard," coach Kim Anderson said after Tuesday night's 63-61 victory over Auburn in Missouri's home finale. "It's hard on the coaches, it's hard on the players."
It's hard for an outsider to find much positive, too.
But if you look far enough past the 9-21 overall and 3-14 conference records and an RPI that has plummeted to 201,you can see improvement since the season started with that embarrassing loss at home to UMKC. Here are five such bright spots:
• They've learned to go in the right direction. For much of the season, Missouri's guards often were unable to penetrate past the defense. "We couldn't go north and south," Anderson said. "We couldn't go toward the basket and make a play."
Because the guards struggled to penetrate into the key, good shots were hard to come by. But as the season went on, Shamburger and Wes Clark -- before he was injured -- were better at operating how the coaches wanted.
"It takes time to do that. You have to get some confidence," Anderson said.
• They found a leader. Sort of. Clark, the gritty sophomore out of Detroit, is sitting out the last month because of an elbow injury, so fully determining how much he's stepped up in the leadership department will have to wait 'til next season. But there's no doubt he took significant strides in that direction. Even on Tuesday, he was the one in the late-game huddle rallying the troops, not one of the players in uniform.
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"Guys were starting to respond to Wes when he was playing," Anderson said. "We were searching for that guy, that leader. He was starting to be that guy. I don't think he was there yet, so to have him around and have him encouraging was good."
• They found a go-to scorer. Maybe Johnathan Williams III's knees weren't quite right early on. Maybe he was adjusting to life as the main scoring option. Whatever the reason, for the first stretch of the season, Williams lacked the aggressiveness the Tigers needed from him.
But he came on in December. During an eight-game run, Williams averaged 17.6 points and 9.1 rebounds, and you could almost see his confidence rising from one game to the next. A dismal one-for-13 shooting performance at Kentucky in January cooled his mojo and his consistency waned. It did not help that defenses started paying him considerably more attention, too. Since the Kentucky game, Williams has scored in single digits more than double digits.
Still, he has shown enough variety in his offense that he could become the guy to average 17 points rather than the 12.2 he takes into the final game of this season. Williams uses a long first step when he's driving to his left that is hard for one defender to stop. He also has displayed a nice touch on 3-pointers when left open and has scored inside with his right hand enough that defenses can't completely overplay his left hand.
If he visits the weight room regularly this summer, he should be in line for all-conference consideration in his junior season.
• The freshmen stuck with it. All of them have had their issues and all of them have dealt with inconsistency. But each of the five freshmen has shown enough that you can see them becoming winning players if they stay the course. Here's what I would suggest they focus their offseason work on:
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Montaque Gill-Caesar: Ball-handling.
Jakeenan Gant: Getting stronger. He's the most athletic player on the team but has been pushed around inside on a nightly basis.
Tramaine Isabell: Harnessing his quickness. He can beat the defense, but often is so out of control that it doesn't do him much good.
Namon Wright: Everything but his shooting. He already owns the best 3-point shot on the team but needs to improve defensively.
D'Angelo Allen: Becoming more of a presence. Allen seemed to figure out his niche as an energy guy pretty early. But he would benefit by becoming more involved on both ends of the court.
• They haven't given up. The Tigers looked like they had last Saturday in a 24-point loss at Georgia. But three days later, they gathered enough fortitude to overcome an eight-point deficit in the final four minutes and beat Auburn for their second straight home victory. For a young team desperate for some success, that could prove huge.
"At least at the end, we kept fighting at home," Anderson said. "We fell behind eight points and we kept plugging away. That's progress. Hopefully, it's something we can build on."
Because a lot of building still is needed.
You can follow Stan McNeal on Twitter at @StanMcNeal or email him at stanmcneal@gmail.com.
