Yes, Mizzou is as bad as you thought -- historically bad, in fact
Missouri's dismal basketball season only gets worse when compared with other teams from the school's rich basketball history.
The Tigers have grown accustomed to success, particularly at Mizzou Arena, where they went 99-6 over the past six seasons. So it must be a little jarring to those familiar with the program to see this year's team 7-8 at home, with six home losses in SEC play alone.
Missouri's only win outside of Columbia came against Division II Chaminade, and the team's eight total wins (against 21 losses) are two fewer than any other team in a Power Six conference. Ken Pomeroy ranks the Tigers 198th out of 351 schools -- just ahead of James Madison and behind USC Upstate -- and ESPN's RPI pegs them at 201st.
It will be only the second time since KenPom began publishing his ratings system in 2002 that Mizzou will finish outside the top 100, and it was only 160th in 2005-06. Those Tigers finished 12-16 after Quin Snyder got fired midseason, and they're one of just two Missouri teams to finish with a losing record since 1978.
Three others failed to reach .500 in the '70s, and they put up some quite uninspiring numbers. But any objective analysis reveals this year's Tigers have hit lows not seen in Columbia in almost 50 years, since the 1967 hiring of a 32-year-old coach from Northern Iowa by the name of Norm Stewart.
Most metrics indicate Mizzou should benefit from playing in the Southeastern Conference, the worst of the major conferences despite the membership of Kentucky, clearly college basketball's best team. That doesn't speak well for the rest of the league, which ranks sixth according to the latest numbers from RealTime RPI.
The Tigers also have the advantage of more conference games than most of their forerunners, but despite breaking a school-record 13-game losing streak last Tuesday, they're still headed for disaster at 2-14 in the SEC with two games left. Even if they can beat lowly Auburn and Mississippi State, they would only match the lowest conference win total since the 1977-78 season, one higher than the 3-11 mark of 1973-74, the worst of the Stewart era.
Even those teams notched some impressive victories, including an 86-74 win over No. 20 Hawaii in 1974 and a 74-52 rout of No. 19 Nebraska in 1978. First-year coach Kim Anderson and his team haven't beaten anyone better than bubble team LSU, and they lost by at least 15 to all five ranked teams they faced.
Missouri's problems begin on offense, highlighted by a glaring lack of individual scorers. Johnathan Williams III has stepped up to more than double his scoring average from last season, but his 12.2 points per game would be the lowest by the Tigers' leading scorer since Bud Heineman in 1950-51.
It's worth noting points are down all across the country, but surely few teams have seen their offensive numbers plummet quite like Mizzou. The Tigers are averaging 61.2 points per game, their lowest output since Stewart took over and their first time below 70 since the 2005-06 season.
Of course, Stewart's illustrious 32-year run in Columbia began long before the advent of the shot clock and the 3-point line -- not that this year's Tigers have taken advantage of those rules. They rank 201st in the country with 6.2 3-pointers per game, and their success rate of 32.8 percent is the lowest for a Mizzou team since 2004-05.
Their 66.8 percent rate from the free-throw line is on track to be the worst since 2005-06, and the Tigers' 40.6 percent field-goal shooting would be the worst since Stewart took over. Even the 1966-67 team that shot an awful 37 percent from the field averaged 68 points per game, and no Mizzou squad has scored less than this season's team since 1951-52, when the Tigers went 14-10 while averaging 56.3 points per game.
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Home success has long been a hallmark of Missouri basketball, whether games were played at Hearnes Center or Mizzou Arena. The Tigers could still avoid the infamy of a losing record in a very winnable game against Auburn on Tuesday night, but this will be the first time they've finished worse than four games over .500 since 1973-74.
Struggles on the road aren't as new for a school that lost its first 16 regular-season conference games away from home after the formation of the Big 12 in 1996. But Mizzou offset those issues with a 13-3 home conference record during those first two Big 12 seasons, including a perfect 8-0 mark in 1997-98 that helped secure a bid to the 1998 NIT.
To find a home record worse than this season, one must go back to Stewart's first year, when the Tigers went just 4-7 in Columbia. Like Anderson, Stewart found the cupboard mostly bare upon his arrival, though he still won 10 games, highlighted by a 67-66 triumph at Kansas in a year the Jayhawks finished 22-8.
Yes, basketball existed before Stewart, though Missouri fans may not want to talk about it. The Tigers won only three games total and one Big Eight game in each of their final two seasons under Stewart's predecessor, Bob Vanatta, all while shooting 37 percent from the field and giving up close to 80 points per game.
Finally, those are some numbers this year's Mizzou team will have no problem eclipsing.
You can follow Luke Thompson on Twitter at @FS_LukeT or email him at lukegthompson87@gmail.com.
